


Stairway to the Stars

by MsTrick



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Adulterous Fantasies, Adulterous Thoughts, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Barebacking, Bisexual Gabriel Reyes, Bisexual Male Character, Blow Jobs, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Formalwear, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Pre-Fall of Overwatch, Slow Burn, Uniform Kink, mutual masturbation (sorta)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2020-06-03 21:56:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19472986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsTrick/pseuds/MsTrick
Summary: Panting, Jack looked up at the balcony, victorious and eager, and the glittering, gleeful hunger in Gabriel’s expression lit him up from the inside.For a moment, it was just the two of them in an empty gym.For a moment, they glimpsed the possibility, an alternate life, where neither were attached, how easy it would be.They shied away hard.((In which Jack and Gabriel become friends because theydon'twant to fuck each other, spend two decades struggling to convince themselves that this is still the case, and then get together at the exact wrong moment.))





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor homophobic language in this chapter.

As a fairly rigorous army initiative, the Soldier Enhancement Program maintained a strict schedule even after the day’s training regimen was complete: dinner at 7pm, followed by an hour of free time and then lights out at 9pm. This was obeyed by the program’s participants without complaint or fanfare until about 3 months in, when the first round of injections began producing results. The tortuous training suddenly felt easy. They could run faster, jump higher, lift heavier weights. Where they’d once collapsed into exhausted sleep at 9pm, they now buzzed with excess energy, adrenaline, ideas – everything.

Which meant that, less than an hour after lights out, a symphony of moans, groans, sighs and stifled screams rose up, rolling straight through the cheap, lowest bidder built walls. How nice that they’d been equipped with enhanced hearing with which to hear every squeal and squelch.

Gabriel buried his head under his pillow, but it didn’t help much. The influx of pornographic sounds and his own high volume of energy kept him awake and alert. He’d already jerked off twice and his roommate had only left the room 45 minutes ago.

Someone rapped on Gabriel’s door. He fully intended not to answer it. Then the knocking persisted for a solid minute. He launched himself towards the door and yanked it open with a snarl.

“ _What?”_

The blond soldier in front of him looked as wrecked as Gabriel felt, swipes of lavender under blue eyes that were probably gorgeous when they weren’t bloodshot. The harsh smack of the fluorescents wasn’t doing him any favors. He had a pillow under his arm. Gabriel’s gaze dropped to the dog tags.

John Francis Morrison. Soldier: 76.

Gabriel knew the name. It was consistently in the top five on the boards installed in the mess hall, which tracked numbers of kills in simulations and weapon accuracy and a few other statistics the brass thought would keep them competitive.

He hadn’t realized it was the cute guy from Indiana who all the other soldiers called Jack.

Jack, on the other hand, was fully aware of who Gabriel Reyes was. The soldiers assigned to his squad were always the most battered by the end of the day, complaining of extra laps and endless repetitions of maneuvers. Even the other officers seemed nervous around him. He was also distractingly handsome.

Gabriel Reyes’ door was the last one on the base that Jack would have chosen to knock on.

_Well, too late now._

“Can I sleep here?” Jack asked.

Gabriel blinked in disbelief.

“Worst pick-up line ever. Also, I’m taken.”

He started to close the door and glared hard when a hand shot out to keep it open.

“Yeah, so am I,” Jack snapped. “But our roommates are fucking and 23 told me to crash with you because they won’t be ceasing said fucking until midnight checks. And I know you outrank me, but if you don’t let me sleep here, then I’m on the couch in the common room and 49 puked on it yesterday. I just need a place to get a few hours of sleep that isn’t directly in the path of a rampaging orgy or steeped in someone else’s body fluids. Sir.”

Gabriel very nearly smirked at how the word _sir_ managed to sound like _asshole_ coming out of the other soldier’s mouth, but he managed to retain his stony expression.

“You think a bit of puke is going to be the worst sleeping condition you see?”

“Of course not, but good morale and adequate sleep improve the odds of training success. Sir.”

“If this is an elaborate scheme to try and get in my pants, I will put you in med bay with a broken nose.”

“You’re either paranoid or extremely egoistical. Sir.”

“I can’t be both?”

“You do seem like a high achiever.”

Gabriel’s smirk surfaced along with a short huff of laughter.

The room on their left, assigned to Soldiers: 21 and 22, began emitting yelps at higher and higher volumes. Jack’s gaze slid to their door, his expression somewhere between a blush and a glare.

“Still think this is your best option?” Gabriel asked, one eyebrow raised.

Jack sighed in disgust and ran his hands over his itching eyes, already resigning himself to the couch. Though the enhancements were eating away at the number of hours they needed to sleep, they still needed _some_ before their 4am wake-up call.

But, to his surprise, Gabriel stepped back and invited him in with a tilt of his head.

“Thank you, sir,” Jack said, meaning it.

Their rooms weren’t exactly cushy. Small and stuffy, most had the slimmest of windows near the ceiling and just enough space for a bunkbed and two trunks. It was narrow enough that Jack had to wait for Gabriel to return to the bottom bunk before he could swing himself up to the top. They settled in and fell quiet, though their neighbors certainly didn’t.

_Thump – “Ungh!” – Thump – “So good!” – Thump – “Yeah, you like that?” – Thump_

“Jesus Christ on a cross,” Jack groaned in exhaustion. “Do you have any ear plugs?”

“If I did, I’d be hoarding that shit like gold.”

At some point, Jack’s tiredness drowned out the noise, static slowly snowing his consciousness into sleep. Assured that Jack had been telling the truth about his intentions, Gabriel dozed off, too.

But then the room on their right side started up. Gabriel blinked awake, dry-mouthed and bleary, bombarded with the most inharmonious mash-up to ever exist.

From one side: _Thump thump – “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” – Thump thump thump – “More, more! Oh my god, I said MORE!” – Thump thump thump thump thump_

From the other: _“Who’s my good kitty?” “I am!” “What was that?” “I AM, DADDY!” “Wait… What? I mean, no, okay, yeah, I am your daddy!”_

Gabriel shoved his tongue into his cheek, trying to quash the laughter building in his gut. He heard Jack roll over.

_“I’m your baby!” “Meow for me!” “Meow! Meow! Oh, OH, OH, MEOW MEOW MEOW—”_

Jack lost it.

Full-on snorting, howling laughs that triggered Gabriel’s own wheezing hysterics. Jack sucked in air, nearly choking. Trying to stifle himself with his pillow, Gabriel convulsed, abdomen hurting, eyes dripping. Every time one of them started to calm down, something ( _“FUCK MEOW!”_ ) would set them off all over again.

“And here we lie, like monks in a whorehouse,” Gabriel sniggered, yanking another burst of laughter out of Jack.

“Well,” Jack gasped out. “I always thought SEP stood for Sexual Energization Program.”

“Special Ejaculation Permission.”

“Super Enhanced Penises.”

Gabriel laughed so hard, he started coughing.

Jack didn’t exactly get the sleep he was looking for before midnight checks had everyone scurrying back to their assigned beds, but his gut ached from laughing so much that he didn’t mind. 

With the bloodshed seeping across the globe, a spreading puddle of red, Jack hadn’t laughed like that in a long time.

Breakfast was its usual fiesta of people eyeballing each other, discussing who’d been glimpsed flitting in or out of whose room, whispers and giggles and smug expressions. As soon as training began, they’d transform into disciplined soldiers. Before then, they were high schoolers without the burden of body issues.

As usual, Gabriel ate alone and Jack ate with the large gaggle of soldiers he’d become friendly with. By chance, Jack caught Gabriel’s eye from across the mess hall. Gabriel remained stoic as ever, his expression betraying nothing. At least, until Jack pantomimed a clawing motion and mouthed, _Meow_. A corner of Gabriel’s mouth tipped up, the barest hint of a smile, and he refocused his attention on his food.

Soldier: 29, a bulky man from Maine named Oliveira, gawked at him.

“Uh, what? Jack. You didn’t…”

“Didn’t what?”

“ _Reyes?_ ”

“Not even sort of.”

Oliveira narrowed his eyes at him, suspicious, but didn’t press it.

Clearing his plate, Gabriel wondered if Jack would show up again that evening. He’d never admit it out loud, but Jack’s brazen disregard of Gabriel’s rank and reputation had been refreshing. Gabriel had high expectations of people and little patience for anyone not challenging themselves, especially in a program like this. That so many of the SEP participants were unnerved by him, too scared of harsh words or too cowed by hierarchy to meet him head on, only soured Gabriel’s attitude further.

Jack had been the first person in weeks to talk back to him, the first person in months to make him laugh, and Gabriel couldn’t help but respect him for it.

A knock came less than thirty minutes after Soldier: 23 skipped out the door.

“I’m not running a hostel here,” Gabriel said as soon as he opened it.

“Of course not. I’d be paying you if you were,” Jack said breezily, stepping past Gabriel into the room and chucking his pillow onto the top bunk.

“That’s not a bad idea.”

“I’ll report you for extortion.”

“I’ll report you for invasion of privacy.”

“What privacy? We’re government property. As far as I’m concerned, I’m rearranging military resources in order to improve their efficacy.”

“Jesus, is your tongue solid silver or just silver-plated?” Gabriel chuckled.

Jack curled his tongue behind his teeth. “Ask my S.O.”

“Your superior officer? Didn’t think García would be—”

“My significant other, you prick.”

Gabriel folded his arms and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Uh. Sir,” Jack added unconvincingly.

“Girlfriend or boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend,” Jack said with an amused frown.

“What?”

“You’re the first person to ever ask me girl _or_ guy.”

“Well, I’m bi, so it would be pretty disingenuous of me to assume.”

“Noted,” Jack said with a quirk of his lips. “So, how about you? Girl or guy?”

“Not a girl. A woman,” Gabriel said with a show of teeth.

“Oh, forgive me.”

“Adriana. Tough as nails and full of sass. She’s a defense attorney. Been married for just over a year.”

“Mm, I noticed the ring,” Jack said, hauling himself onto the top bunk.

Gabriel leaned against the wall with his arms folded.

“Tell me about your boy.”

“Vincent,” Jack supplied, flattered and surprised that Gabriel had any interest. “He’s doing his PhD in Economics at Notre Dame.”

“Let me guess. High school sweethearts?”

“Went to prom together and everything.”

“That’s disgustingly cute.”

_Thump Thump Thump_

Jack gave the wall a baleful look.

“I’ll bet 20 credits the room on the right hit their orgasms first.”

“Gambling is illegal on military premises,” Gabriel stated. “I’ll raise you 50 and say the fuckers on the left last longer.”

“Deal,” Jack said, flopping backwards with a laugh.

It became something of a habit.

Jack would crash for a few hours in Gabriel’s room, they’d place bets on whatever aspect of other soldiers’ sex lives they could think of and would often talk for so long that by the time Jack had to return to his bed for midnight checks, neither had slept a wink. Lying on bunkbeds in the dark, unable to see each other, couched on either side by some of the most primal, embarrassing sounds human beings could make, conversation unrolled at an easy pace.

Even though they had almost nothing in common.

The sprawl of Los Angeles and the fields outside of Bloomington might as well have been different planets. (“What the hell do you do for fun?” “How the hell do you put up with the noise?”)

Jack watched documentaries; Gabriel read classic literature. (“You know there’s better stories out there than biographies of army generals, right?” “You know they’ve published fiction in this century, right?”)

Jack was a jock in high school; Gabriel a goth. (“Like, the actual quarterback? You’re basically a gay porn premise.” “Eyeliner and a lip ring? Shit, I’d love to see that.”)

In every sport, they supported different teams, though both disliked to see New York win. (“There’s just an arrogance to every team from that fucking city.” “Exactly. Thank you.”)

Wracked with the bone-growing, muscle-shredding agony induced by the injections, Jack went dead silent; Gabriel ran his mouth. (“This bed might be the least comfortable horizontal surface in the entire universe. Feel like I’m gonna hurl every organ onto the floor. Adriana would laugh her ass off if she saw this. She once broke her arm and drove herself to the hospital and stopped to get a milkshake on the way, because she’s too good for pain, apparently. You’re not dead, right? Morrison? Jack? Okay, good.”)

As the weeks went by, they drifted into deeper topics. The loss of Jack’s best friend to an opioid overdose. How Gabriel’s parents never really believed he was bisexual. Jack’s hope of marrying Vincent after the war. That Adriana was pregnant.

“Seriously?” Jack said, dangling over the edge to look at him in the dim light. “Congrats, man! That’s amazing!”

“Yeah…” Gabriel’s eyes unfocused. “I am scared shitless.”

Jack laughed good-naturedly and dropped down to squat next to Gabriel’s bed.

“I was a camp counsellor for a few summers. Trust me. Kids aren’t _that_ difficult.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes, unconvinced. Without thinking, Jack squeezed his shoulder. The reassuring touch almost startled them both. For months, their only human contact had been medical examinations and hand-to-hand combat.

“If you’re as attentive a father as you are a squad commander, you’ll be more than fine.”

“You’re not even in my squad.”

“Kinda wish I was.”

“So you can stare at my ass all day?”

“It’s a fine specimen, but no. Seriously, I’m a little jealous of your squad. You push them so hard. García’s fine but he’s not challenging us as much as he could, and all the stuff they’re pumping into us just keeps making everything easier.”

“You’re still top of the boards.”

“Yeah, but–”

_Thump Thump Thump “OH YEAH!” Thump Thump_

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

* * *

Naturally, people assumed they were sleeping together.

Gabriel never acknowledged, rebuffed nor replied to the gossip. After a while, Jack stopped bothering, too. His close friends in the program knew the truth; that was all that really mattered.

The gym was open at all hours and Jack wasn’t the only soldier who burned off excess energy there, winding up the treadmill as fast as it would go, stacking free weights onto the weight machines, anything to quell that restless itch. A dozen or so people milled about after dinner, chatting as they squatted and lifted.

Gabriel debated between lateral raises and shoulder presses. On the other side of the room, Jack was spotting Oliveira as he bench-pressed the equivalent of his body weight, arguing the merits of football versus rugby.

Soldier: 53, a short man from Tennessee, cut Oliveira off mid-sentence.

“Morrison, we need to talk.”

“In the middle of something,” Jack replied.

“I can’t just stand by and watch you destroy a marriage.”

“Seriously, Brian?” Oliveira huffed.

“I already told you Reyes and I aren’t—”

“Look, nobody’s believing your lies anymore.”

Hearing his name, Gabriel’s gaze flicked over to the commotion.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Oliveira snapped.

“ _My_ problem? _I’m_ not the one engaging in adultery,” Brian said.

Jack clenched his jaw but didn’t take his eyes off Oliveira, who finished his set and slipped the bar into Jack’s waiting palms. Jack racked it and turned to glare at Brian.

“Gabriel is not cheating on his wife,” he said icily.

“Look, I understand that _you_ don’t think it’s cheating because you’ve only got a boyfriend, not like a legitimate relationship. But a wife is different. I mean, I guess it’s better that he’s fucking you instead of another woman, but it’s the morality of the—”

“ _Wow_ ,” Oliveira interjected. “You remember gay marriage has been legal for decades, right?”

“Just because something’s legal, doesn’t mean it’s right,” Brian sniffed. “A man and a woman. That’s the natural design. You can’t argue that. Just because fags think about sex all the time and can’t help themselves isn’t an excuse to sabotage someone else’s marr—”

Oliveira shoved him backwards and Brian stumbled into a weight machine with a clang, barely keeping his balance.

“Need a real man to stand up for you, Morrison, is that it?” Brian jeered. “You fucking him, too?”

Oliveira raised both fists. “You fucking piece of—”

“Brian, I think you’ve made your point. You can leave now,” Jack said, his deep voice pure steel.

“ _You_ don’t get to tell me what to do,” Brian said, taking a threatening step forward.

“Aw, don’t worry, Jackie,” Gabriel drawled, appearing out of nowhere to sling an arm over Jack’s shoulders. “Brian’s just jealous he’s not getting any of your sweet ass. Should we take pity on him and invite him to join us tonight?”

“What the fuck, Gabe?” Jack shoved him off.

“You’re degenerates,” Brian spat, hands clenched and shaking.

“Yeah.” Gabriel licked his bottom lip and got in Brian’s face. “That’s what all closeted homophobes say until they’ve got a cock in their ass, and then they can’t get enou—”

The punch caught Gabriel square in the face and blood erupted from his nose. They all knew Gabriel could have dodged it. With their souped-up reflexes, any of them could have dodged it. Gabriel gave Brian a gory smile. Brian’s expression went from pleased vindication to pale fear as it clicked that he’d just assaulted a senior officer.

“Dismissed,” Gabriel said, bringing the back of his hand to his bloody nose.

“That wasn’t my fault! You provoked me!” Brian wailed.

“Sure did. I'll advise your squad leader to punish you accordingly. Dismissed.”

Red in the face, Brian opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it and stalked out of the gym. Jack hauled Gabriel to the other side of the room and shoved a towel at him.

“What the fuck was that about?” Jack snapped.

Gabriel pressed the wadded cloth to his face and leaned into the pressure.

“I know it tends to slip your empty blond head, but I _am_ a senior officer,” he said after a few seconds. “Part of our jobs is to assess your capabilities in a number of areas.”

“Such as barroom brawling?”

“You’re not stupid, Jack. What’s the best way to see what someone’s made of?”

“Get them angry?” Jack deduced.

“Next best thing to putting them under fire.”

“Even if you wind up getting punched in the face?”

“Learned what I needed to know. Soldiers: 29 and 53 will allow their emotions to get the better of them. Soldier: 76 won’t. You know what we’re up against. Bastion units that will go from classroom to classroom, methodically slaughtering children. We don’t stop the massacres by letting ourselves get upset. The ability to keep your rage or grief in check will be the difference between living and dying.”

Jack considered this, his chest tight.

“I don’t think we save humanity by sacrificing what makes us human. We need to be better than the bots, not become them.”

“You’re an idealist with delusions of grandeur,” Gabriel said flatly.

“You really want us to win this war even if it means losing our own souls?”

“I really want us to win. Period. Can worry about souls later.”

“From a strategic standpoint, I think your thinking is flawed. We’ve studied the bots, we’ve seen how they don’t mourn fallen comrades or even really acknowledge them. We’re an army of human beings. Caring about each other, letting that emotion drive us to push our own limits to protect the people back home, that’s powerful. And it’s something the bots don’t really understand. That has to be a strength.”

“Some of the time, it is. Mostly though, it just makes people reckless. How easy was it to trick 53 into acting on his emotions against his own self-preservation?”

“Okay, yeah, emotion makes soldiers on a battlefield unpredictable and it’s problematic, I get that. Off the field though, it’s crucial. You end up fighting for the guy next to you in the foxhole, right? Most people don’t make decisions based on strategy. They vote for whoever makes them feel safe. They hire people they like. They follow people they love, often into battle.”

“Or they follow people they fear. Easier to make them fear you than love you.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jack cracked. “I am particularly loveable.”

Despite the lighthearted tone Jack steered the conversation towards, he carefully logged away these new insights into Gabriel’s character. That Gabriel worked on multiple levels and had no problem with ulterior motives wasn’t exactly surprising. Jack had seen how many walls Gabriel kept between himself and others. What _was_ worth noting was how far Gabriel would go to achieve an unseen objective. He’d keep his friends out of the loop, manipulate them, possibly injure them. He wouldn’t hesitate to get himself injured either.

Most people could see Gabriel Reyes was dangerous, but his brawn and combat prowess barely covered the reason why. No, what really made him dangerous was that you didn’t know which game he was playing, whether he was truly on your side or not.

Jack knew this wasn’t the type of person you let yourself grow close to, if you were smart, if you didn’t want to get hurt. It was the foolishness of pretending a wild bird of prey would make a friendly pet. But still, Jack found himself at Gabriel’s door, knocking to be let in.

That night, two soldiers died. Cardiac arrest while they slept.

The high of the program’s early results were fizzling out fast. Exhaustion settled over them all like a fog. The hours after lights out were suddenly soundless again. Participants no longer had energy to throw away; their bodies needed every drop to survive the brutal training and the toll of the latest injections. Death crept through their ranks, some soldiers’ DNA dissolving like tissue paper in the wash of injections. It was almost like a culling. Or a plague.

Dread hit those remaining as soon as their eyes opened in the morning and they rushed to check their roommates were still breathing. They were expected to care for each other during this period. An exercise in field medicine and comradery, so they were told. The contents of the serums were alternated, so not all soldiers would suffer the same symptoms at the same times. Though the official order was to minister to their roommates’ needs, Soldiers: 23 and 75 had pleaded for Jack and Gabriel to allow them to be with each other.

Which was how Gabriel ended up responding to being called Vincent for the better part of a night.

It would have been funny if Gabriel hadn’t been terrified Jack wasn’t going to make it to sunrise.

His skin was waxy and pale, his eyes glassy and unseeing, his breaths an unsteady rattle. Gabriel sat on the floor next to the bottom bunk, on which Jack was buried under both their blankets. And still he shivered so hard, his teeth clacked like dice.

Gabriel had gone through the same symptoms two days earlier, but he hadn’t been nearly as delirious or cold. Jack convulsed as pain electrocuted his muscles, kicking his breathing into a frantic tempo. He groped around him, searching.

“Where—”

He lurched upwards, panicked and tangled in the blankets. Gabriel fumbled to catch him before he fell face first onto the floor.

“Warm,” Jack mumbled. “Come to bed, Vince.”

“Back under the covers,” Gabriel coaxed, nudging him back into the bed.

But Jack wasn’t letting him go.

“M’cold. Baby, I—I can’t—” Jack pleaded, his panic tipping into hyperventilation.

“Breathe.”

Gabriel had gently fended off all earlier attempts at snuggling, but the pain evident in Jack’s normally rock steady voice was unnerving him. Plus, he was tired and sore from keeping watch. He unfolded his stiff legs and climbed under the blankets.

His skin like ice, Jack immediately burrowed into the heat of Gabriel’s chest, murmuring Vincent’s name in relief. His head tucked up under Gabriel’s chin, and Gabriel obligingly wrapped his arms around him.

“Getting awfully comfortable there. You’re lucky I like you, boy scout.”

“Mm, Gabe calls me that.”

Between the fear of waking up to a corpse and Jack’s full body spasms of pain, real sleep was impossible for Gabriel. He grabbed a few minutes here or there but spent the bulk of the night chasing his thoughts.

Holding Jack made him miss Adriana, though her soft curves and his rigid muscles couldn’t have made for more different cuddling experiences. The last man he’d held in his arms had to have been his boyfriend in high school, what felt like an eternity ago.

Maybe it was because it had been so long since Gabriel had been emotionally vulnerable with another man that he’d been such an asshole two days ago. In his own fog of agony and mental stress, he’d been as pliant a patient as a tiger with a toothache. His knees had given out halfway to the bathroom and he’d lashed out at Jack for attempting to help him back to standing.

“Look. I don't need you to take care of me. I'm not catching, you get it? That's not my role in relationships.”

“Well, then your marriage must be pretty shit because in healthy relationships, people take care of each other.”

“I'm not like you. I'm not a bottom.”

“Neither am I, ass hat.”

“Bet you'd be my bottom.”

“Fuck you, Reyes. Why the hell am I even trying?”

Gabriel grimaced, thinking about it now. Not his finest moment. He’d played like he didn’t remember any of it and Jack had had the grace not to bring it up.

Gabriel hugged Jack’s sweating, shivering form into his chest, hoping this would make up for it, and really hoping Jack wouldn’t die.

* * *

Marisol Reyes was born healthy and giggly a week before Hallowe’en, and Gabriel was given four days to visit her. Adriana was staying at her parents’ place in the Hudson Valley, a sleepy town in upper New York state. Gabriel demanded she remain there, far from all the country’s major Omniums.

Gabriel came back with about a million photos on his phone and a box of homemade cookies, iced to look like ghosts and jack o’lanterns. In spite of the persistent exhaustion, he was glowing. They sat cross-legged on Gabriel’s bed and Jack smiled as he listened to Gabriel talk at length about his girls. He’d never seen anything like unabashed joy on Gabriel’s face before.

Eventually, Gabriel asked how things had been here and Jack’s smile slipped.

The worst of the culling seemed to be over, but they were still losing a soldier every other week. Jack’s squad leader, García, had died in the interim, along with Oliveira and two others who Jack had been friendly with.

“Got my wish,” Jack said dully. “They reassigned me to your squad.”

He sank his heavy head into his hands.

“Fuck,” he swore under his breath. “García, Olly… They were such good people.”

Gabriel squeezed his shoulder and after a moment, Jack looked up at him in watery gratitude.

“You know we’re experiments. Try not to get too attached,” Gabriel advised softly.

“Says the man giving me cookies,” Jack chuckled, swiping at his eyes. “I’m like a stray dog, you know. Once you feed me, I’m never going to leave you alone.”

“Pretty dumb of me. Want to split the last one?”

“Thanks, Gabe.”

Maybe it was because of that dog comment or because of Jack’s flawless obedience during even Gabriel’s toughest training sessions, but Gabriel did sort of think of Jack as a golden retriever. Reliable. Even-tempered. A good guy. A great friend.

It wasn’t until the tournament of hand-to-hand combat that Gabriel realized if he wasn’t married, he’d be in love.

Everyone had been looking forward to the tournament since it was announced in the first week of the program.

While the injections laid them low, their training had focused primarily on strategic warfare and Omnic studies. Now that they had completed the full course of enhancements, the culling seemed to have stopped and that excess energy bubbled up again. They were tired of classrooms. They felt healthier than ever, felt like gods, were eager to pit themselves against each other, to see what they had been made into.

The boxing ring was cleared of training equipment and space was cleared in the gym. The rivalry between officers and the rest of the soldiers was played up and spurred on, as whoever came out on top of the officers’ rounds would face whoever won the soldiers’ ones. Officers’ stats weren’t on the boards, so there was no way to know for sure who lead the pack in ability, which made for some intense betting that the brass took part in rather than prosecuted. The rules were Fight Club-esque. As in, besides no shirts or shoes, there were barely any.

Gabriel tore into his opponents with a maniacal glee that defeated half of them before the first punch was even thrown. Jack laid his bets on Gabriel and collected his winnings with satisfaction.

The soldiers’ rounds progressed at a slower pace, as there was more of them. Jack got through most of his matches cleanly and with dignity, even though they’d been given the go-ahead to do their worst to each other. While others aimed to break and knock out, Jack pinned and immobilized.

As expected, Gabriel thought with a roll of his eyes. Though he, too, collected his winnings when Jack made it to the semifinals. Soldier: 53 vs 76. Whoever won this match would face Gabriel in the finals. Like the rest of the officers, Gabriel watched from the broad balcony overlooking the gym floor.

The buzz was palpable. Soldiers either hated Brian and loved Jack, or loved Brian or hated Jack, or hated them both. Brian shot the crowd toothy grins as he climbed into the ring.

“Your fighting’s as pansyish as you are,” he said to Jack as greeting. “You going to twist the bots’ arms and let them go when they cry? Or, let me guess. You just like the feel of forcing men under you.”

“Pansyish isn’t a word,” Jack replied, casually rolling his shoulders.

“Like I care, fag. It fits you.”

The bell rang.

“Best of luck to you, Brian.”

“Man, you really are a—”

Jack frowned at Brian’s bare feet.

“Uh. What’s wrong with your foot?”

“What do you mea—”

The instant Brian’s gaze dropped, Jack slugged him straight across the face, sending a spray of blood across the floor.

Everyone, the ref and Gabriel included, gaped.

Aside from Brian’s pained grunting, there was dead silence.

Brian staggered back to standing from where he’d landed on all fours, glaring daggers over his bludgeoned nose. Jack observed with a mild, almost pleasant, expression.

“I’d say I’m surprised you were stupid enough to fall for that, but that would be a lie,” he commented.

“Cheater. Was that to get me back for hitting your boyfriend?”

“No.” A smile played over Jack’s lips. “That was for me.”

“Should have kicked me while I was down, nice guy,” Brian spat, both fists raised. “Because you aren’t getting another shot.”

“If I kicked you while you were on the ground, I wouldn’t have the pleasure of knocking you down there again.”

Teeth bared, Brian launched himself forward, feinted left and threw a right hook. Jack was quicker though. He ducked and landed a savage uppercut that had Brian doubling over, gasping in a way that meant a fractured rib or two. Without hesitating, Jack took a fistful of his hair and drove his knee into Brian’s face.

The crowd vocally winced as Brian landed on his back, more blood gushing out of him.

The same thought was rolling like thunder through everyone’s heads: _this_ was Jack Morrison pissed off? The soldier who was a master at deescalating situations, the golden boy who was a friend to anyone who needed it, the fighter who had proven multiple times that he could end a fight without leaving a scratch on his opponent.

Fascinated and attracted and impressed, Gabriel found himself leaning over the banister, as enthralled as a child at the circus.

Jack could be _mean_ , but he’d waited until the right moment to do so, betraying a gleam of vicious calculation. Jack probably could have knocked his opponent clean out with that first slug to the face, but he had chosen not to. Because he wanted Brian to know he was losing. And who he was losing to.

For Gabriel, this was the moment when their relationship vaulted from comfortable 2-D to a more visceral 3-D. This was when he switched from hoping Jack would make it through the war to being determined to make sure he did. Gabriel had the odd, wonderful thought that their friendship was going to last for a long time.

Face still neutral, Jack wiped his knuckles off on his sweatpants and waited patiently for Brian to clamber back to his feet, the way a cat would watch a mouse.

Barely able to see through his smashed face, Brian was done trying to make this a fight and went straight for brawl tactics. Barreling forward, he slammed Jack to the ground and started wailing on him. Jack’s forearms took the brunt of the blows as he shielded his head. Brian slowed and stopped, heaving like a bull, and his two hands dove for Jack’s throat.

The referee took a step forward. Hairline cracks appeared in the banister below Gabriel’s hold.

Jack gripped Brian’s wrists on instinct as his air was cut off. Then the training took over and he changed tack, bringing both arms up through Brian’s and jamming a thumb into each of his eyes, not enough to permanently blind him but more than enough to send him reeling. Furious, Brian swung without seeing, catching the side of Jack’s head and splitting a blond eyebrow.

And Jack started laughing.

That rich, deep rumble set off something giddy inside Gabriel.

With brutal efficiency, Jack rammed the heel of his hand into the left side of Brian’s ribcage, further aggravating the fractured ribs. Brian toppled sideways off Jack’s stomach with a yowl. Jack hopped back to his feet, bloodied and grinning, the same grin that Gabriel realized was plastered on his face.

Shock locked half the crowd in place. A few of the other officers looked to Gabriel to see his reaction to the viciousness of his future opponent and were unnerved by the excitement in Gabriel’s eyes. You might even call it lust.

Brian stayed down this time. The ref counted and called the match. And the slack-jawed throng found its voice, erupted in roars and cheers.

Panting, Jack looked up at the balcony, victorious and eager, and the glittering, gleeful hunger in Gabriel’s expression lit him up from the inside.

For a moment, it was just the two of them in an empty gym.

For a moment, they glimpsed the possibility, an alternate life, where neither were attached, how easy it would be.

Jack’s bare chest and abs shining with sweat, the dark gold trail of hair that began below his navel and vanished into his sweatpants – it didn’t take much imagination to relocate him to a bedroom, panting and flushed for a different reason, his sweat painting Gabriel’s skin, those powerful muscles flexing beneath his hands, writhing up into him. Christ, Gabriel already _knew_ what Jack felt like in his arms.

Gabriel’s balls tightened. Desire pulled hot and tight in Jack’s gut.

The physical response snapped their minds back to reality. The soap bubble vision of that alternate universe popped, and they shied away hard.

Bewildered and angry at the fierce beating of his heart, Gabriel full-on retreated to his room, praying that Jack wouldn’t show his face tonight. Because he had no fucking clue what he’d do if Jack did.

Jack didn’t make an appearance, had evidently opted for his own bed, and Gabriel paced, relieved.

Alright. He was maybe very attracted to Jack Morrison. It wasn’t like feelings could be helped; they just were. Didn’t make him a bad person or a bad husband. His dick had gotten hard for a number of people who weren’t his wife, because he was human and gorgeous people existed. It was purely physical. It was actions, not thoughts, that had to be apologized and atoned for. And Gabriel wouldn’t be acting on this impulse.

Tossing and turning in his own, strange bed, Jack wasn’t so sure the immorality of sinful thoughts could be brushed off. Sermons from mass and lectures from Sunday school invaded his mind. Swamped with guilt, Jack locked his feelings away. They didn't mean anything. It was a dumb crush that only existed because Jack hadn’t been laid in how many months. It would pass. Gabriel was his best friend and Jack was a hot gay mess. That was all.

They both tried to focus on their home lives, to summon Adriana and Vincent in all their heat and smells and touch, but the apartment in Los Angeles and the quiet fields of the Morrison farm seemed like separate planets from the reality of the SEP. All those little loving moments from their lives before were so sharply overshadowed by warfare and preparing for it.

Their fight was due to take place the next day. They barely slept, each wondering how to get through something as intimate as a fight without crossing a boundary.

They never had to find out. 

An hour before the sun rose the following day, the Omnic Crisis lurched into a full-scale screaming global war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an exercise in patience, since I've never written a legit slow burn fic. I'm usually too thirsty lol As demonstrated by me posting an excerpt from this a few months ago: [Starry Eyed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18753991) \-- pure smut, no plot spoilers.
> 
> More tags and characters will be added as I go. I'm going to dangle that Explicit rating like a tasty treat though.


	2. Chapter 2

In the trenches together, finding out where their limits truly were, it became normal for Gabriel and Jack to be in each other’s space, breathing each other’s air, sleeping pressed against each other. Had they had the energy or inclination to even think about sex, they would have balked at the intimacy, wary of how deep their bond was getting without their permission. As it was, with their dicks soft and protected and irrelevant to the actions and thoughts that consumed their day-to-day, they barely noticed. 

With the United States SEP, Germany’s Crusaders and a number of other ethically dubious and desperate projects, humans were fighting back and surviving, but they certainly weren’t winning. After the attempt to retake the Detroit Omnium was a colossal disaster, the remaining SEP squads were tasked with nationwide damage control, evacuating civilians and stymying the spread of Omnic forces in small battles that never seemed to stem the onslaught.

“It’s not going to work,” Gabriel hissed into Jack’s ear at night. “We need to focus on the Omniums again, change our approach. We don’t have enough firepower or resources to take them down in a war of attrition without resorting to nuking the country.”

The war dragged on, clawed through months, then years, leaving piles of bodies, punching cities off the map, draining humanity drier. It hit home that this wasn’t a war that would be done in time for dinner. The world was eking beyond recovery. It wasn’t going to be a matter of getting economies back on their feet; it was a matter of making sure there would even be enough solid ground to stand on.

And then one day, they won. 

Gabriel’s unorthodox strategies and Jack’s ability to galvanize people to follow them secured the SEP its first major victory. They retook the Sacramento Omnium and disabled the malicious god program Malsumis, cutting loose all Omnics on the west coast from its influence.

The shockwave of the victory, the respite, was the first wave of real hope the United States had felt in years.

But Gabriel was pissed off.

Just as they were shutting down Malsumis, an OR14 had plunged through the ceiling, surprising them, and Jack had stepped between Gabriel and the arc of its heat blade. The enormous knife wedged deep into his shoulder and split his collarbone like a twig. And the next thing Jack remembered was waking up in a hospital bed with Gabriel glaring at him.

“It’s because I gave you cookies, isn’t it?”

Jack let out a painful chuckle. “Woof.”

Less than a week later, United Nations Under-Secretary-General Gabrielle Adawe descended upon their camp like an avenging angel with a prophecy. She was flanked by two bodyguards and a lean Singaporean man named Liao, and she asked to speak with Gabriel in private.

Overwatch. A nimble strike team assembled from the world’s best. A unique and unprecedented response to this unique and unprecedented threat.

Gabriel didn’t need much convincing.

“I’ll do it, but I’m going to need my second-in-command to come with.”

“John Morrison?” Adawe asked. 

“Jack,” Gabriel corrected.

Liao pulled up the information on a tablet and handed it to Adawe before she needed to ask. Her fierce eyes skimmed it.

“His file suggests a very competent, well-rounded soldier but not terribly specialized.”

It was true. Jack was excellent at just about everything but not exceptional in any one field. Gabriel was an array of extremes of varying intensities, passable at medical and communications and long-range weapons, extraordinary in strategy and stealth and close-quarters combat. But Jack was reliable, supplementing Gabriel’s inconsistent strengths and balancing out Gabriel’s weaknesses. Plus, he was better with people. Gabriel told Adawe as much.

“Wouldn’t he be more useful here, leading in your stead?" 

“Possibly. But we’ve been a team for the last four years, and I can say objectively that I work best when he has my back. The majority of maneuvers I created have had some measure of his input, including the one that just allowed us to retake Sacramento.”

That same night, Gabriel and Jack (sporting a shining scar on his shoulder) were whisked away from the cheerful ruins of California to the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, where Liao, impatient and anxious, introduced them to their new squadmates. 

Ana Amari. Petite and silent and deadly. The kind of woman who _could_ run the world but wasn’t going to do your job for you. The kind of mother who didn’t bother to learn how to cook but who would personally coach her daughter how to knock a man unconscious. She was possibly the first person Gabriel had ever met with a lower tolerance for bullshit than him.

Torbjörn Lindholm. One of the fathers of this entire conflict. Designer of the E54 Bastion units that had chewed holes through Gabriel’s flesh and troops. Though as Torbjörn was one of the few engineers of his caliber who had fought against networked AI in weaponry, it was difficult to bear him a grudge. He wore the responsibility for his creations in his wrinkles and bones.

Reinhardt Wilhelm. A mountain of a man carrying fresh grief and pinch hitting for Balderich von Adler, the former leader of the Crusadors. He was in a place of transition, juggling his vivacious bravery with his newfound humility, learning where his spirited enthusiasm was helpful and where it wasn’t.

After their first debriefing as a unit, Gabriel discovered Reinhardt and Jack commiserating over coffee, sharing their uncertainties, both unsure if they should really be here. Gabriel snapped that they were both idiots and vital to the team. And since he was their Strike Commander, there was no arguing with him.

They got to work. Their capabilities interlocked and balanced, the five of them spokes on a single wheel rolling forward, forward, forward. They began winning. Then, the Omnics adapted, recalibrated and nearly crushed them. They retreated through graveyard towns where thousands of corpses had been left to rot where they were shot on the streets, in their homes, in the hospitals.

The Strike Team couldn’t afford certain emotions, didn’t have the energy for them. Anything resembling sorrow (or joy or lust or fury) simply failed to load in their minds. Their bodies were tools held together by stitches and the simple reality that breaking down was not an option. They weren’t mechanical creatures though, and cracks did appear. Reinhardt’s enormous tears, the cauldron of despair in him boiling over. Torbjörn’s silences, where he vanished into the hell within himself. Gabriel sealing more and more of himself away. Jack clawing Gabriel to him when they slept, trying to breathe in sync, to just breathe, to do nothing but breathe. 

Ana didn’t cry. It was like she’d willed herself not to for so long that she’d forgotten how. Her body rejected grief and despair like viruses. They’d find her emptying her stomach into the bushes, pale and wracked with cold, and Jack would hold her until her temperature returned to normal. He was the only one she’d let do so. She trusted them all with her life, but she was still the lone woman on a team of men she’d only met recently.

Jack was no stranger to being considered ‘safe’ by girls and had no issue obliging. Torbjörn and Gabriel, both fathers of daughters, understood her wariness implicitly. Reinhardt was the only one who seemed bruised that Ana didn’t trust them on every level of her soul as he trusted the team. But it had been a long time since Reinhardt had felt small and vulnerable. He remembered his arrogance at Eichenwalde and put aside his ruffled feathers.

In quiet moments, throbbing with exhaustion but afraid to sleep, they learned everything about each other’s loved ones, intimate stories and details that were later deployed at low points, as carefully rationed and applied as their medical supplies.

C’mon, Gabe. Get up. Gotta get you back to your girls. Walk it off, Jack. We’re not sending you back to Vincent in pieces. Stay awake, Ana. Fareeha and Sam are waiting for you. Would Ingrid want to see you like this, Torb? Let’s go. They wielded and dangled the names of Reinhardt’s girlfriend and mother, all of the Lindholm children, Jack’s parents, Gabriel’s sisters, Ana’s nephews. Prodding and spurring. Remember who you’re fighting for.

It took nearly a month of struggle to reclaim Rio de Janeiro. Though the city seemed peaceful, they couldn’t rest assured of their victory until Liao arrived in his tiny stealth dropship.

With the Omnics’ capabilities, electronic messages were simply too dangerous. So, Liao carried papers across continents, and committed critical intel and communications to his photographic memory. He was their primary link to Adawe and the United Nations, meeting them in every battlefield and escaping it unnoticed. 

It was his pleasure to tell them that all sources confirmed that Omnics had made a full retreat from Rio. The city was theirs. 

In spite of his barely suppressed anxiety and his frequent coming and going, he was one of the few consistent people in the Strike Team’s lives and they grew fond of him. While impromptu festivities barreled down every street in a whirl of music and glitter and cachaça, they huddled around a picnic table at a bar near the beach. Photos were taken on a digital camera and they snickered at how serious they looked, so took a bunch of stupid ones as well. They were a few beers in, nothing more than a mild buzz for them all, when Gabriel ordered:

“Okay. Virginity loss stories. Go.” 

Liao went wide-eyed in surprise. The rest of them didn’t. This wasn’t the first time Gabriel had sprung an outrageous conversation prompt out of nowhere. He knew better than anyone how easy it was in downtime – even pleasant downtime – for their minds to wander down dark alleys. Even an hour to brood could be paralyzing. 

“Ingrid, of course,” Torbjörn scoffed. “And I did it all properly. Dinner. Candles. Rose petals on the bed.” 

“Such a romantic!” Reinhardt bellowed.

“Hardly,” Torbjörn dismissed. “When yer gun is smaller, you’ve got more legwork to do. Unlike you log-carriers who can just show up.”

“Romantic,” Reinhardt insisted. “She wouldn’t have married you otherwise.”

“Well, it was decidedly less romantic when one of the candles lit a curtain on fire.”

Ana snorted.

“My boyfriend in my dorm during my first year at university,” she said. “And that’s all you’re getting from me."

“Ah, for me, it was the lovely Emilia in the spring of my twentieth year,” Reinhardt began with a rapturous sigh. "I courted her for months. She was wonderfully shy! I still remember the charming flush of pink in her cheeks and her plump buttocks, which rippled like the most perfect river. Both her hair and her eyes were dark and rich as coffee. I invited my fair angel to stroll through the forest after our village's Easter celebration and we lay in a field of wildflowers. We made love to the sounds of bird calls and a burbling stream as the afternoon sun crossed the sky.”

"I'm sure every word of that is true," Torbjörn scoffed.

"It is!" Reinhardt hollered, eyes glinting in delight.

“In another life, Reinhardt, you’d be finding your glory as a wandering bard,” Jack said with a warm smile.

Their gazes landed on Liao, who blushed furiously and coughed into his fist.

“Uh, girlfriend in junior college. I guess that’s senior year of high school in American terms. In the stairwell of my family’s apartment block." 

“Why the stairwell?” Gabriel asked.

“It was the only convenient private space. Everyone in Singapore lives with their families and cars are too expensive for normal teenagers to own. It’s a bit of a trial by fire – you have to really like someone and really be confident they like you back to hook up on concrete under fluorescent lights.”

Liao looked shyly pleased when they laughed. Reinhardt clapped him on the back.

“Jack?” Ana prompted. 

“Vincent, right?” Gabriel guessed.

“Well…” Jack looked away. “Yes and no.”

“Oh ho!” Torbjörn said with raised eyebrows.

“Thought you said you screwed after senior prom,” Gabriel said.

“I did. I screwed him. That was one type of virginity.” Jack huffed out an embarrassed laugh at the grinning interest on his teammates’ faces. “You’re going to think I’m such trailer trash.”

“You assume I don’t already think that, Indiana,” Gabriel cracked.

Jack kicked him under the table and Gabriel stuck his tongue out.

“Vince and I broke up the summer after junior year, so I decided with all the logic of a heartbroken 17-year-old to drive to this bar a few miles up the highway. And this was _the_ seedy bar we’d all been told to never ever go to.”

“So, of course, you beelined for it,” Ana snickered.

“Long story short, I found a guy to bend me over the bed of his pick-up truck in a nearby field.” 

“Jack, you fucking legend,” Gabriel laughed as Torbjörn hooted and Liao went darker red.

“Well, I thought Vince and I were done for good, but then we ended up getting back together less than two weeks later. Oh. Shit. Don’t tell him. He doesn’t actually know.” 

"My friend! We would never betray you,” Reinhardt cried, blushing mightily.

“Assuming we’ll live long enough to meet him,” Ana muttered.

“Way to keep the optimism flowing, Amari,” Gabriel said flatly.

“Your turn,” she retorted. “Your wife?”

“His older sister’s best friend,” Jack supplied with a smirk. “In the backseat of the family car. Parked behind the public library.” 

“My sister smashed up my guitar in retaliation,” Gabriel sighed. “Because of her, my rock star career died on the vine.”

“Worth it?” Ana asked.

“I don’t do regret,” Gabriel said, baring his teeth. “Waste of time."

After Rio de Janeiro was Busan, South Korea.

Then South Africa. Iran. Hangzhou in eastern China.

They saw the bloodied brink, walked along it, came back from it. 

And then one day, they won.

Completely.

The god programs were all contained. All the remaining Omnics surrendered. The Strike Team were flown to the United Nations headquarters in New York to give their final mission reports. And after a solid week of meetings and discussions and corroborating with world leaders that the fighting had indeed ceased everywhere, the war was officially declared over.

Tomorrow, for the first time in years, there were no missions to wake up to, to strategize for, to mentally accept possibly dying for.

The island of Manhattan had become Cloud 9. On every avenue and cross street, victory and life and gratitude flowed and exploded and sang. They’d _won_. The Crisis was _over_.

The Strike Team had spent the week either in the hotel boardrooms or in their beds making up for years of poor sleep. But with New York City awash in pure, unadulterated joy, they weren’t staying in tonight. They found themselves breathless and bewildered, celebrating in a world that was broken but alive. A world with one foot in technological innovation so advanced it was heaven and the other foot in an impoverished, gang-run hell. But they’d done it. They had a future again. They had carried the weight of the world and now were safely relieved of it.

Jack and Gabriel had never had the chance to test exactly how much the SEP treatments had amped up their alcohol tolerance, and the six of them descended upon a grungy bar with the single-minded goal of finding out. It was dark and stuffy, full of bodies, but they snagged a table to themselves. Liao got the first round: two entire bottles of good vodka, three jugs of tonic to wash them down and a plate of lemon slices because Ana liked all her beverages bitter. Reinhardt helped him carry it all.

Torbjörn took increasingly messy notes on a napkin, calculating time and alcohol percentage and body mass. They discovered quick enough that it took a not unreasonable amount of alcohol to _get_ Jack and Gabriel drunk, but the real challenge was in keeping them intoxicated. Their super-powered livers burned through anything in less than an hour. 

Fortunately, they were recognized, and the celebration caught like wildfire. Pints of beer, bottles of wine, and every type of hard liquor covered their tabletop, crowding it full. Plenty of fuel for Jack and Gabriel to outrun their sobriety. The entire bar roared as they clinked full-sized bottles of rum and chugged them dry. 

The shock of it all actually being _over_ , of surviving everything, was just as much of a high as the alcohol.

Liao bowed out, exhausted, around 3am. Reinhardt began crashing not long after. Dozing, he nearly toppled off his seat. Jack and Gabriel managed to coax his garrulous bulk to his feet and out into the fresh air. Torbjörn rolled his eyes as though he wasn’t equally belligerent and drunk, and volunteered to make sure the big idiot got back to the hotel. The night was wet with recent rain, slicked with puddles that doubled the neon on the street. They hailed one of yellow taxis galloping by. 

Gabriel and Jack were hanging off each other, laughing so hard they were nearly silent, as they watched Ana and Torbjörn bribe, push and plead a boneless but obstinate Reinhardt to sit and _stay_ in the backseat of the cab.

“Can’t, I can’t breathe, need to breathe,” Jack gasped, swiping at the tears spilling out of his eyes.

“No, no, I need the, the, wassaword, _electrolytes_ ,” Gabriel choked out, leaning in. 

His breath was sweet from the rum as he licked messy wet stripes across each of Jack’s cheeks.

Jack laughed and squirmed, feeling like a kitten being cleaned. He pushed at Gabriel’s shoulder until his hand slid around to hold him in a one-armed hug as they kissed, sloppy and giddy and _happy_. Because they’d survived everything, from serums to shock troops. They’d survived it together. 

“Oh man,” Jack groaned, grinning, lips still warm from Gabriel’s. “Adriana’s so lucky.” 

“No, Vincent’s so lucky!” Gabriel yelled into Jack’s face.

“Everyone’s so lucky!”

“I love you, man,” Gabriel hummed over the lump in his throat, hugging him close.

Jack hugged him back tightly, heart soaring, stomach sloshing. He might just be sick.

“Love you too. So much! A stupid amount much!”

The taxi finally pulled away from the curb with Reinhardt and Torbjörn safely buckled inside.

“Ana! Ana!” Gabriel bellowed. “Jack and I love each other and we love you, so come here!”

“Wha—” 

Jack darted to her side and picked her up like she was nothing.

“I won an Ana at the county fair!” He yelled, holding her high.

“Oh no, oh no, put me down. I will actually vomit on you.” But she was laughing, loose and easy, floppy as a ragdoll. 

“County fair? You’re such a hick,” Gabriel snorted. 

“Hick rhymes with dick! And dicks are great!” Jack shot back.

“Hear! Hear!” Ana cheered from above his head.

“Have an Ana!” Jack yelled, tossing the sniper through the air. 

She yelped in surprise, arms flailing, but Gabriel managed to catch her. Jack stumbled into them, gripping Gabriel’s bicep to stay upright.

“You look so much like a girl,” Jack said, poking Ana’s forehead. “I mean, you are a girl, but you look, not-sniper-ish, like a person, like a normal person. Not stressed, I mean. It’s good. It’s good you’re not stressed.”

She smiled, her eyes inky and unfocused, and let out a jaw-cracking yawn.

They were astonishingly hungover the next day. 

They eked awake to find the three of them flopped in one giant bed, fully clothed, reeking of booze and city grime, their memories a blur of happy moments. Fortunately, they had the day to recover while their loved ones, high officials and world leaders gathered in New York to celebrate. By the time their customized Overwatch formalwear arrived that evening, they felt more or less human again.

Late the following morning, the Strike Team once again met in one of the hotel briefing rooms and saw a completely new side of one another. Cleaned up and polished, they’d been generously pampered and primped by Adawe’s PR team. Their hair had been conditioned and cut, their skin scrubbed and moisturized. Their nails had been trimmed, every spec of dirt scraped out from the beds, even though the white uniform gloves would conceal them.

Ana’s luxurious black hair was braided down her back, the cap smart on her head. She was actually wearing make-up. Reinhardt and Torbjörn pulled off the formalwear less gracefully, both of them clearly uncomfortable in clothes designed for show instead of utility. But they gleamed regardless.

Gabriel and Jack were actually speechless for a few seconds, flustered by how unexpected the other looked.

It wasn’t just the grooming that transformed them into new people. It was the ease, the lack of tension, the happiness. The backdrop of war and exhaustion was gone. No longer needing to evaluate one another’s strengths and injuries and capabilities, this might have been the first time Gabriel and Jack actually saw one another as just men. 

Or as Ana put it, raking her gaze over the two of them:

“Yummy.”

Dressed in a suit and tie, Liao beamed at them all. As the go-between for the Strike Team and the United Nations, the recognition he was due to receive was far smaller than the five engaged in active combat. Reinhardt kicked up a fuss, trumpeting about how integral he had been to their success, but Liao insisted he didn’t mind.

The ceremony and celebration that followed wasn’t for them. Not really. Much like a wedding wasn’t really for the two people standing at the altar. You could enter a marriage with little fanfare and you could end a war with zero pageantry, but the formalwear and presentation of gold signaled to everyone else that a grand change had occurred. It marked an occasion that outsiders could point to and remember fondly. Even though a healthy marriage took years of work before and after the aisle-walking cake-cutting shindig. Even though the effects of the Crisis would bleed into the fresh peace for decades.

Elation filled the Grand Ballroom at the Plaza Hotel. The Strike Team was swept up in it, of course, but it was undeniably awkward as well. They knew so much about each other’s loved ones, they couldn’t help but feel close to these people they’d never met. But the intimacy was absurdly one-sided. How could they look Adriana in the eye when they knew Gabriel secretly hated her cooking? Or Vincent, when they knew Jack had only lost one type of virginity to him? Or Sam, when they knew of his debilitating arachnophobia?

Beneath the pure joy of being with their partners and families again, there was a stilted nature to their small talk, a disconnect between the battered and polished soldiers and the civilians they cherished. Reinhardt and Jack did their best not to notice the strain between the other members of the team and their children, who they’d barely seen for years. Marisol’s shyness around Gabriel, wriggling out of his arms to return to her mother. Ana’s uncertainty at why Fareeha was crying or how to make her stop. The gaggle of Lindholms were older, which eased their reunion somewhat. And Ingrid talked a mile a minute, could hold the conversation for all of them. 

The festivity glittered and fizzed through their entire hotel. Just about every bottle of champagne in the wine cellar was popped. Music drowned them all. Gabriel’s eyes stung with exhaustion. Jack’s voice was shot from talking. The formalwear they’d been so carefully tucked into was undone and shrugged off. And then all at once, it was late into the night and they were saying goodbye. Early flights from different airports meant they wouldn’t see each other the following morning.

Jack and Gabriel stared at each other, the emotions too big to get out of their mouths.

“We never did get our fight,” Jack said, shy with Gabriel for the first time.

“Something to look forward to then,” Gabriel said, voice tight, as their hug lingered. “See you around, Morrison.”

It was surreal. The two of them had spent almost every day for several years at each other’s sides, had long accepted that they might die next to each other. The idea of just saying goodbye and returning to live separate lives several states apart felt… anticlimactic, almost. 

They arrived home with complicated knots in their hearts. 

Swept into enormous celebrations with family and friends, they eventually stopped looking for one another in the crowds. And then allowed themselves to be drawn into the exhausting process of settling into civilian life. There were subtle joys to be relearned and indulged in. Home cooking. Hot showers whenever they pleased. The freedom to do nothing for hours on end. Sleeping in the same bed as their significant others, comfortable and safe.

And yet Jack lay awake night after night, still vibrating, ready for battle, the one or two rounds of sex not enough to take the edge off. Vincent was sated and snoring gently. Jack rolled over onto his back, wondering if running a few laps on the nearby high school’s track would help. 

Several hundred miles away, Gabriel was also staring at his ceiling, listening to the dregs of traffic and his wife’s somnambulant breathing, itching in his skin, hearing echoes of gunfire, needing to _do_ something. 

Jack stood in front of the closet and found that all his running clothes were in the laundry. As he got back into the too-soft bed, Vincent let out a soft groan and Jack’s dick twitched in interest, remembering the delicious sounds Vincent had made a few hours earlier, how tight he’d been, the smell of his sweat as he’d bounced in Jack’s lap. 

Gabriel figured, at this hour, jerking off was the only way he’d be able to burn off enough steam to get some sleep before the sun came up. Adriana was a light sleeper though, one of the many impacts of having a young child, and so Gabriel crept to the bathroom. Enough streetlight came in the window that he didn’t bother with the overhead. Already hard, he stepped into the shower and emptied some bodywash into his hand.

Vincent slept through anything, so Jack just pushed the sheet lower and tugged the waistband of his boxers down. A quiet sigh of pleasure escaped him when he took himself in hand and began stroking lightly. He let his mind wander, his dick thickening as he sifted through images and memories, the often-revisited fantasies of being restrained, ordered around, out of control. Being caged against a wall, a white-gloved hand undoing the brass buttons imprinted with the Overwatch insignia.

Gabriel’s hand abruptly stopped at that image.

Jack’s thoughts screeched to a halt, guilty. Really wasn’t meant to be envisioning that. He relinquished his cock, but it only stiffened further, undeterred by any moral code. 

Gabriel bit the inside of his lip. After all, it was just a fantasy. Jack had looked good at the ceremony. Better than good. And it wasn’t like Gabriel was really jerking off to his best friend. Just to the unexpectedly delicious, limited-edition vision of him in formalwear.

Yeah, Jack thought, hand returning to his shaft. Just an imaginary version of Gabe cupping Jack through his trousers, his other white-gloved hand tipping Jack’s chin up into a kiss that would be brutal, nothing like the happy sloppy friendly smooch they’d shared on the street. It would be – Jack swallowed – possessive. Gabriel would crowd into his space the way he pushed close to targets in combat. Though Jack usually topped in bed, Gabriel was his commanding officer and this fantasy version of him would undoubtedly expect Jack to obey orders too. 

Gabriel knew Jack would talk back, crack some bratty remark even as he panted into Gabriel’s mouth, even as Gabriel finished undoing Jack’s buttons and dragged blunt nails over his rib cage. Gabriel would stay in full uniform however, cap and all, only unbuckling the jacket and unzipping his fly. Would he shove Jack to his knees or would Jack sink to the floor on his own? No, Gabriel thought, dick beading at the tip. He’d growl out an order and Jack would follow it with that self-satisfied smirk on his face.

Jack would make sure Gabriel was watching as he freed him, as he ran his tongue up the underside of his length, avoiding the sensitive head until the last moment. And then there would be the blissful weight of Gabriel’s cock on his tongue, the tang of pre-cum on the roof of his mouth, the girth almost too much for him. Jack would finally get to touch and squeeze those gorgeous thighs as he sucked and swallowed.

Gabriel wouldn’t be able to look away. Jack would start slow, licking and teasing him, until Gabriel knocked Jack’s hat off and grabbed a handful of that blond hair, yanking him forward.

 _Fuck_ , the grip in his hair, Gabriel’s powerful hands…

Jack’s mouth, hot and wet and sloppy. Those blue eyes watering, dark with arousal, as he swallowed Gabriel down as far as he could…

_Come on, boy scout._

Jack crushed the heel of his palm against his closed mouth, feeling the rapid, hot exhales from his nose. The frantic rush of his pulse drowned out the quiet of the bedroom. His cock was almost absurdly hard in his hand.

Mindful of the echoing bathroom, Gabriel clenched his jaw to stifle the groan threatening to tear out of him. He fucked into the tight tunnel of his fist, needing more, knowing in the back of his mind that he shouldn’t be this turned on. God, but Jack would be good at sucking dick, wouldn't he? He'd be perfect at it. Velvety hot, smooth and wet, that silver tongue rippling over his sensitive foreskin, the pressure just enough to drive Gabriel out of his mind and fray his composure.

Jack bit into his palm, his mouth watering, wanting to see Gabriel lose his cool. He pumped faster, fingers slippery with pre-cum, his common sense buried by his desire for more. His asshole clenched, empty, needy. The sheets absorbed his sweat as he thought about how easily Gabriel could manhandle him, how he’d be moaning for Gabe to ruin him.

Gabriel wet his lips. He’d drag Jack back to his feet by his hair, kiss him urgently enough to hurt, barely get Jack’s tailored trousers down before…

Kicking Jack’s legs wider and dragging the head of his cock over Jack’s hole, teasing him. Jack would have to brace himself against the wall as Gabriel fucked into him with just spit and precum, knowing Jack could take it, knowing Jack _wanted_ it…

_Gabe, please, more, fu— Gabe, harder._

Gabriel was panting now, his finish rising fast within him as he envisioned how tight and slick Jack would be, how he’d buck into Gabriel’s thrusts, the hoarse cry of ecstasy that would tear out of Jack’s throat as Gabriel pounded into him.

Jack’s face and neck were on fire, thinking about how rough Gabriel could be, how rough Jack wanted him to be. But Gabriel was unpredictable in devastating ways. He'd have his hand snug around Jack's throat and suddenly it would be his mouth notched into the salty crook, kissing hot and heavy. The fucking would turn sultry and sweet, simmering up Jack’s spine.

Gabriel almost scowled at the achy-sweet deliciousness of slowing his pace. He’d thought Jack obeying his orders made him hard, but it was nothing next to Jack pliant and willing, needing him, lov— No, no, no, he couldn't think that, couldn't go there. He'd never come back if he did.

Hand clamped over his mouth, Jack heard what Gabriel would whisper into his neck. His breath caught and he arched, heels digging into the mattress. Every muscle tightened and spasmed as he unleashed thick, white ropes of cum over his stomach.

Gabriel flung out a hand to steady himself on the shower wall, pleasure erupting through his whole body as his dick throbbed in his grip. He came with enough force that his knees threatened to give out, his balls tightening over and over.

Gradually, the bedroom ceiling swam back into focus.

The sounds of L.A. traffic became audible again.

Jack’s first thought upon descending from the high of orgasm was: _I’m such an asshole_. His climax cooled, sticky and uncomfortable on his skin. Shame crept over him. He wiped himself off with a t-shirt, unable to look at Vincent’s still-sleeping form. Jack knew he was overreacting, but he felt as remorseful as if he’d actually committed adultery. He couldn’t let himself do this again. It could lead to...

Nothing.

He wouldn't let it lead to anything.

It was just a fantasy, Gabriel reminded himself, brushing the guilt away. The definition of a fantasy was that it wasn’t real and was never going to happen. He was married, Jack was with Vincent, and Gabriel wouldn’t see Jack for months, maybe even years.

So, there wasn’t really a problem here.

Still. Best to make sure it was a one-time thing.


	3. Chapter 3

The scary part was how easy it had been to imagine. How fluid. All the details had slid into place effortlessly, like they'd been there, fully formed, all along, just waiting to be summoned forth. But in the light of day, separated by half a dozen states, it was easier to lock the feelings away, write them off as fever dreams brought on by insomnia, ignore them completely.

Gabriel dedicated himself to Marisol, dropping her off and collecting her from school, helping her with her homework. He scored points with his daughter by sewing her a custom princess gown and taking over preparation of the family’s meals. Marisol didn’t like Adriana’s cooking any more than Gabriel did, which became their little secret. The first of many, he hoped. And yet, he was still waiting for the day their relationship no longer felt forced.

Like the rest of the Strike Team, he had considered his loved ones talismans of a better future for so long that reuniting with them, living with them, couldn’t not be jarring. It was difficult not to prefer the ideal creatures of his imagination. There were inevitably times he lost his temper, roaring at Adriana for caring about trivial bullshit or Marisol for being careless. He always apologized and struggled to prevent it from happening again, but it was hard. It was so hard. There was still so much anger inside of him, a writhing urge to fix the idiotic world even though he was supposed to want to rest. The clumsy reconstruction plans that the news trumpeted as progress only threw fuel on the fire.

Once upon a time, before the Crisis, he and Adriana would lie awake at night and talk for hours, weave plans to make the world better. These days, after a long day at the firm, she had little energy to discuss the heavy topics he obsessed over. She urged him to focus on the present, to appreciate it, to bond with his daughter. And of course, Marisol was the center of his universe, but there were 30 million orphans out there – _30 million_ – and who was looking out for them?

It was times like these that Gabriel itched to call Jack, but he didn’t want to barge into Jack’s post-war life, which he presumed to be pastoral and idyllic. He had a vision in his head (that admittedly resembled old Communist propaganda posters) of Jack standing shirtless in a golden field, hoe perched jauntily on his strong shoulder, smiling beatifically at children strolling along the nearby dirt road with milkshakes from that ice cream parlor Jack loved so much.

In truth, running a farm meant managing machines more than plants these days. And although an extreme section of society had decided post-Crisis to eschew all machines and to live off the grid, there was no way in hell Jack was harvesting soybeans by hand. It was mind-numbing how often he’d had this conversation with his neighbors. No, what he’d been through didn’t make him want to recoil from every mechanical device in existence. No, it didn’t make sense for humanity to return to the stone age because Omnics had run amok. No, just because something was ‘natural’ didn’t make it good for you. Poison ivy was all-natural, wasn’t it?

Jack sometimes found himself at a complete loss, unable to form a response to questions about his views on farming minutiae or what type of carpet cleaner they used or what he thought about Mrs. So-and-so refusing to join the PTA. People were very forgiving, simpered that they understood how hard things were for him, chalked it up to PTSD. It was easier to let them think that than to tell them the truth, which was that the boredom was crushing him.

Vincent sympathized, but there wasn’t much he could do about it besides apply for jobs that could make use of his PhD in Economics, which would give them the chance to relocate. Jack urged him to consider New York, Tokyo, London, but Vincent just laughed and kept searching for positions in Indianapolis or Chicago. The most ‘exotic’ city he’d applied in was Houston, Texas. Jack grew frustrated, then grew irritated with himself for being frustrated. Vincent had every right to want to stay near his family. Their families. Jack shouldn’t want to leave them all behind again so soon after returning.

But God, some days he wished he was anywhere else.

The worst was sex, where Jack had to be so careful. Vincent could handle a bit of roughness but Jack’s hands could snap bones. Sometimes, just as Jack began slipping into that blissful head space, his boyfriend would wince and ask Jack to take the intensity down a notch. And Jack would realize he’d been gripping too tight or thrusting too hard, and he’d apologize. The awkward moment killed the mood more than once, leaving them estranged in their own bed, with Vincent feeling weak and Jack feeling irresponsible. By unspoken agreement, Vincent began taking the lead more, setting the pace. And Jack just took to jerking off in the shower afterwards to quell his ravenous libido, which couldn't be satisfied by one orgasm.

He ran for miles, before breakfast, after dinner, sprinting, desperate to channel all that energy into something.

One day, just before dawn, Jack lay awake with his hand moving lazily over his morning wood when his phone rang. Gabriel’s name popped up on screen. Jack’s hand snapped back and his cheeks heated as the fantasy he’d been trying very hard to forget flashed in his mind. But then he realized with some concern that it was 3am in Los Angeles.

"Gabe? What’s up?” He answered, slipping out to the hall so as not to disturb Vincent.

“We won, right? We won?”

Gabriel’s voice had a panicked edge to it that Jack had never heard before. The noise of traffic filled the background.

“Won what?” Jack asked. “The war?”

“Yes, the war, you idiot! What else?”

“Yeah, Gabe, we won. It’s all over.”

“Okay. But it’s just that the bots could have—”

“We _won_. It’s over.”

Jack kept talking, recounting the beats of their final engagement with the Omnics, the week of board meetings that followed, the celebration in New York. As he spoke, Gabriel’s breathing softened from a harsh rasp back to its normal tempo.

“Sorry,” Gabriel eventually muttered. “Just some nights, I can’t believe it. It would have made so much more logical sense for us to lose. And then, you want to hear something awful? Sometimes, I think: well, if I _do_ snap awake in a medic tent and this is all some injury-induced hallucination, at least I’d know who I was and what to do next.”

“That’s not awful,” Jack said, leaning against the kitchen counter, watching the sun peak over the horizon. “War’s hell but it does simplify some things.”

“What if it’s all I’m good for? War, violence, tactics for wiping the other side out. We were made into weapons, Jack.”

“I know,” Jack said, the heaviness of those two words betraying just how often he’d wondered the same thing. “You’re not just a weapon though. You’ve got Marisol. You’re a terrific father.”

“Sometimes, maybe. A lot of the time, I feel like if I stop paying attention for even a second, I’ll accidentally bruise her or Adriana.”

“Well, that’s a mood,” Jack said with a wry chuckle. “It’s very funny the first few times you accidentally yank a door off its hinges or you hug someone too hard…”

“But it gets old fast,” Gabriel finished.

“I should tell you what happened to me last time I was in the supermarket.”

They talked for hours, straight through Jack's breakfast, until the sun rose in Los Angeles and Gabriel had to get Marisol up for school. Vincent didn’t say anything about their morning routine being thrown out the window but Jack could tell he was annoyed.

Now that the silence had been broken, Jack and Gabriel found themselves texting almost every day. No one else really truly understood the despair of superhuman stamina with no goal, the disconnect from normal life, how it was all so trite. What the hell did it matter if you bought the wrong brand of canned tuna? Who cared if the bitch next door didn’t sort her recycling? How could sports and holovid shows and games hold people’s attention for so long? It was such a waste of time and energy.

The world was in blood-drenched fragments, governments and nonprofits trying to stitch the wounds closed with order and law. But gangs swelled in the hollows when stealing food was the only way to eat. With their ad-hoc methods and under-construction emergency protocols and hoarding of resources, the governments and nonprofits were gangs in their own way. Authority was always relative; no one’s was absolute.

When Liao rang Jack’s phone out of the blue, he leapt up in the middle of dinner to take the call, much to his father’s disapproval. Standing on the front porch he’d known his whole life, Jack listened with an enormous grin on his face as Liao discussed the United Nations’ proposal for transforming Overwatch from a wartime strike team into a long-term peacekeeping force.

“I’d love to be a part of something like that,” Jack said, trying to keep his overwhelming joy from bursting out of him. “I’m not sure how I’d best contribute though. What role did you have in mind?”

“Strike Commander.”

“Ha ha.”

“I’m serious.”

“That’s for Gabe, not me.”

“Adawe and the UN reps think that, while Gabriel’s aggression and unpredictability won the war, it’s not the type of leadership they want in peacetime.”

Jack’s joy plummeted, shot out of the sky.

“You can’t do this to him. Not after everything.”

“Nothing’s set in stone,” Liao reassured. “He might end up in the S.C. position yet. The entire Strike Team is being contacted. They want to bring you all in to talk logistics.”

When Jack announced the news to the table, only his mother looked excited for him. His father and cousins immediately began deriding the government for dragging Jack back in to fix their messes, a thin veil for their fear of the dangers presented by the larger world. Stunned, Vincent didn’t say anything until they were back in his living room.

“I just don’t understand why it has to be _you_ running this thing,” he said. “It’s not like the SEP injected you with diplomacy serum.”

“Wow. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I’m not trying to say I don’t think you can do this. Obviously, I think you can. I just—I said I wasn’t going to stand between you and your duty, and I _didn’t_ , and I don’t know, maybe I want to feel like a priority in your life for more than three months. Just feels like ever since you got back, you’ve been dying to leave again. What’s so wrong with Indiana?”

“Nothing’s _wrong_ with it. There’s just nothing for me to really do here.”

“Thus, why I’m applying to transfer to Chicago?”

“Look, I haven’t promised them anything. They’ve offered to fly us both back to New York to discuss this. I’d like to at least hear what they have to say about the position before making a decision. Let’s make a trip out of it. We can do all the touristy stuff we didn’t get to do last time.”

In the end, Jack’s boyish enthusiasm wore down Vincent’s reluctance. And within a week, a taxi dropped them off in front of a posh modern hotel in downtown Manhattan. It wasn’t as swanky as The Plaza, to Jack’s relief, and it was a stone’s throw from the UN building. Nippy spring breezes still skipped through the streets, but the sun shone warm with the promise of summer.

When Gabriel entered the hotel reception with his girls, he was not prepared for the shimmery glee that ran through him at seeing the back of Jack’s blond head. The grin Jack gave him before bounding across the lobby to hug him then set that glee off like a firework. They laughed, loud, giddy. Both had separately worried that their stray fantasies would trip up this reunion, dunk it into an awkward space, but the joy steamrolled everything. It carried the relief and familiarity of meeting one’s own reflection, gazing into eyes that had seen the same horrors and hilarities and victories you had.

Adriana rolled her eyes, urged Marisol towards the reception desk and began the process of checking in. Vincent fiddled with his backpack straps.

An hour before the meeting, they all gathered in the café next door, the Strike Team thrilled to be in close quarters again. Chatter unraveled in all directions. Reinhardt overwhelmed the space with booming delight. Ingrid and Adriana commiserated over shared parenting challenges and joys, with Sam chiming in heartily. Ana and Torbjörn argued hotly about some political issue in Europe. Marisol and Fareeha poked at a game on one of their phones, serious concentration on their little faces.

Gabriel grabbed Jack’s bicep and leaned in to crack comments into his ear. The blond turned into Gabriel’s space with ease and a wide smile.

“Remind me, what did SEP stand for?”

Jack dissolved into snorting laughter. The only explanation Gabriel gave the others was: “Old, stupid joke.”

A sigh of irritation from Vincent, and all at once, Jack and Gabriel found themselves second-guessing the appropriateness of these friendly intimacies. They inched apart. Guilt ghosted through them, though they wouldn’t or couldn’t articulate to themselves what the guilt was for.

The Strike Team’s partners were invited to join the discussion, as the parameters of the positions they were being offered in this new incarnation of Overwatch would obviously impact them as well. Torbjörn’s eldest daughter, a plump and good-natured girl, watched over her siblings, Fareeha and Marisol in one of their hotel suites while the adults met around a round table in a worn meeting room in the UN building.

Liao’s enthusiastic greetings distracted the group from the odd tension lingering about them.

The sweeping goals and directives of the organization were laid before them, the possibilities, the ability to monitor and shape and defend the era of peace they’d created. Gabriel could sense Jack’s excitement, his eagerness to get to work. It was only when the proposed roles were brought up that his enthusiasm dimmed.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, but why isn’t Gabriel being offered the role of Strike Commander?” Adriana asked, eyebrows raised.

“The UN representatives felt Morrison was a better fit with the updated demands of the position,” Liao said.

“And, again, I disagree,” Jack asserted. “Gabe has been our commander from the beginning.”

Adriana narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously.

“No one could possibly question Gabriel’s leadership skills or accomplishments,” Gabrielle Adawe assured. “But commanding in the field during wartime and the diplomatic style of leadership needed now are different capabilities.”

“Just because I’m good with people doesn’t mean I’m going to be able to—”

“Excuse me,” Gabriel interjected. “Can I speak with Jack alone for a few minutes?”

“A short recess for lunch would be good,” one of the UN representatives said. “Everyone should take some time to discuss this with their partners.”

“Yeah, except Jack isn’t Gabe’s partner,” Adriana groused as Gabriel bodily pulled Jack into the hallway and then into an empty meeting room.

“Give me one good reason why I should accept that damn role,” Jack demanded when they were alone.

“I’ll give you two. First, I don’t want it.”

“You’re just saying that, so I—”

“No, I’m not. Listen to me. You _know_ what they’re going to offer me. They’re not going to say it in so many words, but you know it’s going to be special ops. If you take the Strike Commander role, you can let me do what I do best.”

“You’re more than some weapon,” Jack said sourly.

“True. I’m a weapon that can strategize.”

“Gabe.”

“Which leads me to the second reason…” Gabriel took both of Jack’s shoulders in his hands, a serious expression stealing over his face. “I want to keep the world from getting worse, but you actually want to make it better. I see threats to subdue, power vacuums to control, destructive actors to monitor. You actually see people. You see the good they’re capable of. You’ve always been the team’s heart, Jackie. The world needs that right now, not a battle commander.”

“You deserve it though,” Jack said, looking torn.

Gabriel gave him an easy smile.

“I deserve paperwork and PR issues and having to carry a whole organization’s reputation on my shoulders? Pretty mean thing to say, Morrison.”

Jack huffed out a laugh in spite of himself, before insisting: “But think of all the good you could do. The Overwatch name has a ton of influence thanks to our success. You could use it to broker negotiations between warring government factions and get relief organizations to combine their resources. I mean, no one knows what to do with the freed Omnics. We could create a healthy precedent.”

“Sounds like you already have a lot of good ideas for what to do with the position,” Gabriel said fondly.

Lost in thought, Jack chewed the inside of his cheek. Gradually, the hesitation evaporated and resolve took its place. He met Gabriel’s gaze and nodded.

“As long as you’ve got my six,” Jack said at long last.

“Always.”

Torbjörn accepted the role of Chief Engineering Officer with little controversy. Relocating his family from Sweden to Zürich wasn’t nearly as drastic as moving from the United States or Egypt. Recently single, Reinhardt’s decision was equally breezy. He was thrilled to have more shots at glory by leading the organization’s away team on missions.

But Jack, Gabriel and Ana were caught up in difficult discussions for the rest of the afternoon. Intensely private, Ana retreated to their hotel room to argue with Sam about why she ought to take the position of the organization’s second-in-command.

Adriana had little interest in holding back her opinions, and they flowed bitter and harsh even as she and Gabriel walked the few blocks back to the hotel.

“History will push you aside,” she said. “You know how revisionist this shit is. People will see Jack leading things and assume he led everything.”

“Jack has more ideas how to use Overwatch in peacetime than I do. Besides, I was never in this for glory. You know that.”

“This is your chance and you’re just chucking it aside to take on ‘missions with specialized parameters’. Don’t think I don’t know what that means.”

“Do you want the world to get better or not? Progress isn’t always pretty.”

“You’re seriously claiming the ends justify the means? Great moral precedent you’re setting for our daughter.”

“The whole reason I’m doing this is so she can grow up in a country that isn’t on the precipice of falling to cartels. I can do what I do best in a less public role.”

“You’re really just going to let them sideline you for some pretty white boy? If he had any sense of honor, he’d turn the position down flat instead of putting on that whole sanctimonious act about not wanting the jo—”

“Adriana,” he barked. “You’re mad that my picture will fade from the public eye, fewer statues for me, that I’m not going to be this shining hero. I get it. But you do _not_ get to badmouth Jack over this.”

“Oh, don’t I? How dirty are his hands going to get in the coming years?”

“I’m going to take some time to cool off. I’ll talk to you later.”

He turned and stalked back the way they came, so angry he was breathing steam, deaf to the noise of the city until he rounded a corner and heard the unmistakable timber of Jack’s voice. He and Vincent were standing by the cluster of benches and skinny trees near the UN’s entrance, both their bodies stiff and defensive. Gabriel was about to back away and give them their privacy when he heard his name.

“Sure you’re not just excited to work with Gabriel again? The look on your face when you saw him in the hotel… That _hurt_ , Jack.”

Vincent folded his arms, self-protective and unhappy. Jack sighed and decided to risk closing the distance between them.

“Look. I can’t deny that Gabriel and I have a connection. You don’t fight at someone’s side that long and not form a deep bond.” With a gentle movement, he took hold of Vincent’s upper arms and met his injured gaze with clear eyes, much the same way Gabriel had done to him earlier. “But it is _different_ from what we have. There’s a reason Gabe is with Adriana and I’m with you. We don’t want that any other way. Remember, Gabe and I became friends because we were the only two guys in the SEP who didn’t want to sleep around. You’re the one I’m spending my life with. Just, you know, maybe that life could take place in Europe for a little while.”

The tension in Vincent’s muscles ebbed. Jack gave him a loving smile and pressed a slow kiss to his lips.

 _Atta boy, Jack,_ Gabriel thought. _At least one of us is handling this right._

Jack had meant every word, but somehow still felt like a liar. Vincent thawed as the afternoon progressed and by the time the two of them were done with dinner, they were laughing again, Googling Zürich together and butchering the names of all the churches and mountains they wanted to visit. Sex was good, as it always was after they’d had a fight. Vincent fell asleep with Jack pressed against his back.

Jack didn’t fall asleep at all.

Cities flew through his mind, broken ones in need of repairing, corrupt ones in need of scrubbing. He tallied the world’s natural resources, sketched out routes to carry them to those who needed it. He listed the gangs and actors draining the world dry, the ones he could trust Gabriel to neutralize, the ones they could replace with benevolent social programs. It occurred to him that he could create a climatology division within Overwatch, a group independent from political agendas that would have the funds and the freedom to research how to limit the damage of climate change. He considered the millions of orphans. He considered the Omnics, freed from their masters and abandoned in a world that would persecute and hate them for decades.

Hours passed without his thoughts pausing. He carefully unwound himself from Vincent, pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, and wandered down to the hotel bar. Its offerings were modest and it was lazily decorated, but it was open all night. It didn’t surprise him in the least to find Ana and Gabriel sipping beers, as awake as he was and talking about parenting struggles. They didn’t seem surprised to see him either. The bartender asked for a selfie with them when she brought over a beer for Jack.

“You look like you’ve already taken every single one of the world’s problems and made them your own responsibility,” Ana said, shrewd as ever.

“I’m excited about what we’ll be able to do,” Jack said. “Knit the world back into something stronger, stable and predictable.”

“Careful with those expectations,” she warned. “They’re heavy enough as they are, and we weren’t exactly chosen for our organizational management skills.”

Their bottles tapped together in cheers anyway. Despite the potential pitfalls Ana’s cynicism illuminated and despite the wishes of their loved ones, it was obvious that the three of them intended to continue their careers of making the world a better place. And what’s more, they knew they’d be able to. They hadn’t reached the limits of their capabilities.

“First celebrity crush stories. Go,” Gabriel ordered.

This drew small smiles from the other two.

“Easy,” Jack said. “Sebastian Stan as the Winter Soldier in those old Avengers movies.”

“Of course,” Gabriel scoffed.

“Dev Patel,” Ana said, a nostalgic look in her eyes. “Especially with his hair shaggy.”

“And the beard,” Jack chimed in. “He’s gorgeous. Haven’t seen much of his earlier stuff though.”

“If you want to talk old movies, my sister was obsessed with _A Knight’s Tale_ , watched it practically once a week,” Gabriel supplied. “Hard to complain when you’ve got Heath Ledger in every scene.”

“He was the one in _Brokeback Mountain_ , right?” Jack asked.

“But he’s so white,” Ana laughed.

“Yes and yes, but… I don’t know, some combination of dopey romantic, morally upstanding and ambitious fighter always gets me.”

“And yet you lost your virginity to a girl and married a girl,” Ana commented.

“I married a woman. And I don’t have to prove my bisexuality to you, Amari.”

“Of course not. It’s interesting is all.”

“Just the way it went.” Gabriel shrugged. “Happened to meet my high school boyfriend after I slept with my sister’s friend. If I’d met some guy before Adriana, I could have wound up with him.”

“Mm, you and your Heath Ledger lookalike. Think he’d be more on board with the way your career’s going?”

“Someone’s sharpening her fangs,” Gabriel said darkly.

They’d seen Ana like this before, cynical and antagonistic, in moments when she felt vulnerable or uncertain. She tipped the remainder of her pale ale into her mouth and set the bottle down too hard.

“Sam’s worried about the impact all this will have on Fareeha,” she said. “Thinks it’ll further galvanize her dreams of military service. He has a point, of course, but this work will hardly be some glamorous fight for justice. I’ll be lucky if my duties even let me see her on a daily basis, another point of contention that likely won’t ever be rectified.”

“I don’t know,” Jack said, optimistic as ever. “I think we can pull it off, somehow, make our work and home lives mesh.”

“You trying to convince us or yourself?” Ana asked.

Jack grimaced and took a swig of his beer before answering.

“All parties present, I guess.”

But Gabriel’s marriage ended almost immediately after he agreed to lead Overwatch’s Special Ops, the rather uncreatively named Blackwatch. While spring morphed into a roasting summer, Gabriel’s life was dismantled brick by brick.

As expected, Adriana was terrible to oppose in a courtroom setting. The custody battle was nothing short of vicious. In the end, he was limited to visitation rights on weekends, but was forbidden from taking Marisol out of the country without Adriana’s permission. Obviously, she declined to grant it, even as Gabriel dealt with the logistics of moving to Switzerland. He stopped answering Jack’s texts and calls, snarled at his sisters and blatantly dismissed his few remaining friends.

When he finally boarded his plane in LAX, no one was speaking to him and that was just fine. He had a week in Zürich to get settled while the paint finished drying in the Overwatch Headquarters building. He found the nearest liquor store to his economical new apartment and filled the half-furnished space with a collection of bottles and take-out containers. He told Ana to fuck off, Reinhardt to shut up and Torbjörn to eat shit. He had no interest in any of their pity or pep talks or attempts to make him feel better.

Fortunately, he had enough sense to tell Adawe he simply wasn’t feeling well. Unfortunately, she gave Jack the spare key to his apartment when Gabriel refused to answer his phone for two straight days.

Jack knocked, then let himself in without waiting for Gabriel’s response. A bag of donuts swung from his hand. He assessed his former commander with a steady gaze, taking in his unkempt beard, reddened eyes and unwashed hair. Gabriel glared from his half-made bed, couched on either side by boxes he’d yet to unpack.

“Did I invite you in?” He snapped.

“You look like shit. Get up,” Jack said, setting the bag down and opening the curtains.

“Giving me orders already? Bet you simply couldn’t wait for this day.”

“Didn’t think you were the type to wallow in self pity,” Jack replied, refusing to rise to the bait.

Gabriel scowled and climbed to his feet. He was only in his underwear and dog tags.

“Well? I’ve gotten up, as per your orders, sir. Anything else you’d like me to do, sir? Put on a brave smile? Talk about my feelings? Get on my knees and suck you off?”

Jack remained maddeningly calm, giving no indication that he’d even heard.

“Gabe, I know you’re probably—”

With a fluid step forward, Gabriel had Jack's back against the bare wall.

"I could fuck you so hard, your eyes would roll into the back of your head."

Blue eyes shot wide. Jack exhaled roughly as heat spilled through his entire body. Gabriel watched the flush bloom over his face with obvious satisfaction. Jack flinched away from his own reaction, angry at the both of them.

“Get the fuck off me.”

He shoved at the hold, but Gabriel had always had the edge in hand-to-hand combat and kept him in place.

“I'm not a good person, Jack.”

Gabriel kissed him, harsh and dry, knocking the back of Jack’s head into the wall. Jack didn’t move for far too long a second, then he turned his face away.

“You are, though,” Gabriel chuckled meanly. “Aren’t you? Sticking with that boy of yours even though part of you thinks he’s holding you back.”

Jack stared at him with too many emotions to count.

And Gabriel realized he’d screwed up.

In trying to drive Jack away, he'd accidentally tapped into something visceral and unspoken. Jack’s resistance would crumble like a house of cards if he pushed a tiny bit further. Gabriel felt temptation weigh heavy and hot. But, in spite of his earlier assertions about goodness or the lack thereof, he wouldn't make Jack decide what came next, wouldn't force him to choose between Gabriel and his own integrity.

“Sorry,” Gabriel muttered, eyes low as he let Jack go. “Ignore me. I’m just being an asshole.”

Jack’s heart thudded in his chest as they backed away from the edge. He couldn’t help wonder if Gabriel was respecting his relationship with Vincent or if he’d realized that Jack wasn’t actually who he wanted, that he was just missing Adriana. That second possibility was not allowed hurt as much as it was. But this wasn’t the time to analyze his own messed up feelings. Right now, Gabriel needed him.

“I know,” Jack said quietly. “You’d rather everyone hate you than pity you.”

He made them both coffee, since the coffee maker was the only thing in the kitchen, and they drank it with the sugared donuts at the table that had come with the apartment. Though he felt a twinge of guilt at how patient and comforting Jack was, at length Gabriel began to talk, broke open his unhappiness, and it did make him feel a bit better.

“She liked the hero version of me she had in her head. And hey, I like that version of me too but we’re in grayer territory now. I don’t know. I always knew she could get nasty in arguments, but some of the things she said just got to me. Me being willing to kill people and break laws if that’s what it takes, that maybe that was all I’m good for, that she didn’t want any of that near Soli, didn’t want our income to rely on that.”

“Fuck, Gabe,” Jack said softly.

“It just… kills me that she doesn’t get that it’s for Soli. All of it’s for her. To make the world a place she deserves. And I tried arguing, my dumb mistake, said how you don’t make the world into a good place without tracking down and punishing those who do evil. She’s a lawyer. She should know that.”

“We must all fear evil men, but what we must fear the most is the indifference of good men,” Jack recited.

“Is that… something out of the Bible?”

“Uh. I have no idea. I think it’s an old movie quote.”

Gabriel, eyes still wet with unshed tears, barked out a laugh. Jack gave him a crooked grin, glad to see Gabriel smile, even for a moment.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the one good at giving speeches? Don’t you need to know your references and shit?”

“Shut up,” Jack chuckled, fishing in the paper bag. “Want to split the last donut?”

“Thanks, Jack.”


	4. Chapter 4

Months slipped by, quick and steady, unseen beneath the mountain of work. Suddenly it was Christmas and Jack found himself back in Indiana, trying to laugh along as Vincent regaled their families with stories of how weird Zürich was and how rude the Swiss were. He caught the longing in Vincent’s eyes when his older sister announced she was pregnant, when a friend from high school gossiped about developments around Bloomington, when Jack’s cousin talked about building out their deck next summer.

Jack almost wanted to scream: _I get it! You’re homesick and I’m a terrible boyfriend for dragging you away from all this! I’m sorry!_

But more often, his thoughts weren’t even on Vincent or the merry conversations happening around him. Instead, he chewed over which resources Overwatch’s information security division needed most and which strike teams were optimal for upcoming engagements and whether they could dismantle the Deadlock Gang by this time next year.

Jack tried his best though. He kissed Vincent under the mistletoe, scrounged up excitement for the mother-to-be and talked football with his father. He hugged his mom and focused on being grateful for what he had. He reminded himself that he chose this. He chose Vincent.

After the incident in Gabriel’s sparse bedroom, Jack had returned to an empty apartment, his heart heavy with Gabriel’s suffering and his lips haunted by a kiss that nearly changed everything. The classes Vincent taught at the University of Zürich ran until evening, so Jack knew he had at least two hours to reflect on the sour fact that although Gabriel could be trusted with Jack’s integrity, Jack apparently couldn't.

He’d turned away from the kiss. So what? All it would have taken was one more.

A flash of lightning illuminated this other path, a parallel life where Gabriel didn’t step away, where instead they fell into each other like collapsing buildings, tearing into one another and smashing everything around them. And afterwards, Jack would have come back to this very apartment and broken up with a man who had patiently waited for him to come home from war, a man he’d then dragged to live on another continent, a man he barely saw thanks to work.

 _It wouldn’t have led to anything but my own self-disgust,_ Jack told himself. _I don’t even know what Gabe really wants._

He remembered Gabriel with a wadded towel, nose bloodied but eyes sharp as flint, measuring the people around him through the anger he could coax out of them. He recalled the visceral realization that Gabriel was only ever playing his own game, that he’d only reveal his true goals if it suited him, that he’d put them both in harm’s way if it meant achieving a greater objective. 

Jack loved him fiercely for that, but he knew it also meant Gabriel would never be a safe haven for his heart. And that was what Jack wanted. A home. A family. A partner he could relax with. Sure, he had had all that in Indiana and it was too quiet for him right now, but that didn’t change the fact that he wanted it eventually. That was the point of all this fighting, right?

In the end, Vincent came home from teaching to find Jack had ordered dinner and a nice bottle of wine from his favorite Italian place. He was attentive and loving, and Vincent was kept blissfully ignorant of how long Jack had spent wrangling with the decision to remain committed to him.

Gabriel, as always, saw the world as it was and not how he wished it was. While he noticed the cracks and disconnects in Jack and Vincent’s relationship, he also observed how Jack chose to double down on keeping it in one piece. And it seemed to be working, for now, so Gabriel declined to comment, even though he thought with a pinch of spite that he’d prefer to be alone than in a relationship held together by blind determination.

Even as he wanted Jack to be happy and for his relationship with Vincent to work out, the thoughts Gabriel had while lying in bed at night were very different. The second of hesitation before Jack pulled away. A kiss blurred by alcohol. Two hard bodies pressed together in the tiny span of an SEP bunk. Jack grinning, bloodied and victorious and eager for their fight.

Emotionally drained and physically exhausted, Gabriel didn’t stop his hand from sliding between his legs, didn’t stop the fantasies of fucking Jack raw, his best friend’s body opening and shuddering and taking everything Gabriel could give him. Thick desire washed over him like a guilty fever. He stroked and squeezed, desperate for his own limits to be fucked apart too. 

His time on active duty had made him very adept at compartmentalizing, at placing his feelings in a drawer and keeping it closed. It was a skill he put to good use now as well. It allowed him to collaborate with Jack on projects and in meetings, to get lunch together most days, to talk like they’d always talked.

Sometime in spring, after Gabriel’s fourth or fifth one-night stand, Jack asked him whether he’d seriously date again.

“Unless I happen to meet someone special who passes all security checks, I’m just going to commit myself to Soli and my work.”

“Poor Marisol,” Jack joked. “Blackwatch as a stepmother.”

“Hey, Blackwatch might be a bitch but at least she’s consistent. You’ve seen our success rates.”

“I guess that makes Shimada and McCree Marisol’s stepbrothers. Jesus, putting the three of them in a room is a recipe for chaos if I’ve ever heard one.”

“I will not be introducing my precious 9-year-old daughter to my collection of stray former criminals, thank you very much.”

“Hm. Reyes and his Strays. Good band name.”

“Morrison, we all know my music career died with my virginity.”

“I’m sure you could manage to shake a tambourine or hit a triangle.”

“I’m going to hit _you_ in a minute.”

While Jack surfaced from work for carefully allotted bonding time with Vincent, Gabriel had fewer reasons to pop his head out. He chatted with Marisol on video calls and flew to Los Angeles one weekend a month, but aside from that, he settled completely into his role, pleased to not be in the spotlight, to only need a small contingent of people to approve his operations rather than wrangling with legal authorities, foreign militaries, department heads within Overwatch and the press.

Jack somehow took all that in stride, persuaded rivals to compromise, inspired those with wealth and resources to share, charmed communities and countries. Gabriel watched it all with satisfaction. He’d been right. Jack had been sorely needed in this role.

The first time Gabriel saw him falter was when an organization called Talon introduced itself by sending them Liao’s head in a bag.

Overwatch had had its challengers and competitors since the beginning, but it was always over a specific issue. A rogue gang that refused to comply with the law or a local government that disagreed with them on how to manage refugees. Their operations had been threatened and sabotaged, but this was the first time Overwatch itself had been the focus of a direct attack.

The safety of Zürich’s streets only emphasized the gruesome message, which bled through the bag onto their granite front steps. Reporters camped outside headquarters for days. Pundits argued over whether or not it was a mistake for their city to host an organization with such ruthless enemies. And Talon got all the publicity it could ever want.

It shook Jack, even though Gabriel had warned him something like this was bound to happen. They had made it their business to clean up the chaos that a number of powerful people were profiting from.

While Gabriel mourned the cruelty of Liao’s death along with the rest of his comrades, the cogs in his head were already turning as they flew to Singapore with his cremated remains. Staring out the window at the earth far below, he considered the benefits of building Blackwatch its own headquarters in a different city, a reinforced facility that would draw fire away from Overwatch.

As he mulled over who could handle the complexities and demands of such a project, Gérard Lacroix came to mind. The quick-witted Frenchman had been one of the few government representatives that had helped rather than hindered their team during the Omnic Crisis. His rage at European nations’ reluctance to collaborate on a solution for such an international threat had spoken volumes about his values. That he’d recently shrugged off an assassination attempt said good things about his resilience as well.

Gabriel sent him a message before the plane touched down, determined that whatever Gérard was getting paid at whatever he was doing, they’d double it. If Talon was going to play a game of intimidation, they needed people the criminal underworld feared enough to try and eliminate.

Though Gabriel doubted Talon would be nearly so overt with future assaults.

“If it was me,” he said at the monthly department head meeting. “I’d be working both sides: flashy raids and gory attacks to keep our strike teams busy while also sending double agents and hackers to silently pull our resources and our confidence out from under us.”

 _If it was me_ , he didn’t say. _I’d have planted sleeper agents long before announcing our presence._

“We can’t let that happen,” Jack insisted, steely. “Overwatch isn’t just some NGO getting in the way of some warlord’s earnings; it’s a symbol of hope. People need that. Maintaining our reputation has to be as high a priority as bolstering our defenses.”

Their head of PR nodded in tense agreement. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. As Torbjörn began to run through his suggested improvements to the building’s security, Ana and Gabriel exchanged a long look, each thinking along the same lines. Guarding Overwatch’s reputation as a bringer of hope meant two things: concealing Blackwatch’s more sordid operations and protecting Jack.

“Ah, why couldn’t he be ugly?” Ana despaired, only half in jest.

She gazed up at the tessellation of holographic screens covering the wall of Gabriel’s office. Several of the fly cam feeds showed the exterior of the building. The identities of passing pedestrians were catalogued and checked against criminal databases in real time. Gabriel surveyed the list with folded arms.

“Jack’s going to have to be convinced he’s even a target,” he said. “He believes people see Overwatch the way he does, that he’s just a figurehead and the real heroes are all the hardworking agents.”

Ana sighed, her attention catching on the Blackwatch sigil on Gabriel’s shoulder. Originally, it had struck her as blatantly ridiculous to allot their special ops division its own uniform and branding. Surely, it would be better to camouflage their wet works in the same colors as their other agents. But Gabriel had argued that no one would assume his division operated outside the law when it was so visible. Hiding in plain sight.

Ana had to admit it worked. The world and most of their own employees knew Blackwatch only as Overwatch’s elite task force, skilled individuals trained to handle uniquely challenging missions. Rumors flew around the halls and in the news about the kind of highly classified tasks they were assigned, most only a fraction as scandalous as the truth. Some of the leaks even came from Gabriel himself. Allow people to frown over Blackwatch resorting to violent means to solve a hostage crisis, let them think they’ve found your dirty laundry, make them feel smart. And while they’re congratulating themselves on protecting society’s morals, you can get away with the infiltrations and assassinations and other unspeakable necessities.

“Would it be prudent to render Jack more of a figurehead then?” Ana asked.

“You mean reduce how much power he has?”

“More like, keep him in the dark about certain operations. Give him plausible deniability. That way, he can remain their golden idol and Blackwatch has even less chance of exposure.”

“I don’t think making Jack look inept is going to keep that Overwatch reputation shining.”

“He’d only look inept if you were caught. Your teams are awfully good about not being caught, are they not? If you tell Jack you’re keeping him on a need-to-know basis, he’ll trust you to decide what information he needs to keep Overwatch safe and effectual.”

It was true, Gabriel reflected. Jack would trust him with that.

“On that note,” he said. “You still haven’t told him you and Sam are on a break, have you?”

“No,” she said, adjusting her cowl with a flat look in her eyes. “I just… don’t want him to lose that optimism about his own relationship. He’s trying so hard to make things work with Vincent.”

“You’re getting soft, Amari,” he teased gently.

“I’ve heard peacetime does that to people.”

A heavy beat went by, both of them dwelling on relationships that could bear the strain of war but broke under peace. What did it say about them that their marriages had been healthier when they weren’t around?

“At least we’ve got our girls,” Gabriel murmured.

Ana hummed in agreement. Even though she unspooled distance between herself and Fareeha, hoping to pry her out of combat’s allure. Even though Gabriel only got to see Marisol on screens and on short, monthly visits. 

Adriana resented these weekends. She told him as much one Sunday evening, after Gabriel had returned Marisol safe and sound to Adriana’s house, the inside of which Gabriel had only glimpsed when collecting or dropping off his daughter. It was one of those things he hadn’t realized would bother him, that he didn’t know what his little girl’s room looked like.

Adriana shut the front door behind her, closing Marisol inside and leaving them alone to hiss at each other on the small porch. Cool breezes sauntered by, Los Angeles’ vague attempts at winter cold.

“This isn’t fair,” she said.

“Yeah, a lot isn’t fair in divorce,” he retorted.

“I am not going to be the ‘bad parent’ that does all the disciplining while you swoop in and buy her whatever crap she wants every few weekends.”

“Are you serious? _You_ put yourself in this position when you refused joint custody. If she could actually live with me half the time, then you wouldn’t—”

“That is out of the question unless you quit and move back here.”

“Well, I can’t do that. So, you’re either going to have to be satisfied with being the bitch parent or let me take Soli to Zürich for part of the year.”

“Like your lifestyle has any room for raising a child. You’re not even _in_ Switzerland half the time. And you’d screw up her life here, where she has family and friends and school.”

“Thus, why I said ‘part’ of the year.”

“And if some emergency happens? I’m not having her alone in Overwatch headquarters being looked after by some Omnic while you’re off bloodying your hands.”

“She wouldn’t be alone! Jack and Ana and Reinhardt and Torb would all be there for her. And whether you like it or not, they _are_ her family as well.”

“What happens if you don’t come back from a mission?”

“Well, just because you’re assuming I won’t come back someday, I am going to make damn sure I always do _just_ to prove you wrong.”

“God damnit, Gabe,” she laughed in spite of herself. “Do you just not change?”

He huffed out a laugh too, a pang of old affection in his heart. They’d gotten along so well once.

“Look, I get what you’re saying,” he said, adopting the tone he knew Jack used with Vincent. “I know you’re concerned about Marisol and your relationship with her. And I don’t want to screw up the life she has here, but I need you to let me be her father. I can’t do that in one weekend a month.”

In the end, Adriana agreed to let him have Marisol for five weeks, half of summer break, as a trial run on the promise that he made sure she completed her summer reading, kept up healthy eating habits and had zero exposure to anything related to Blackwatch.

For the first time in a long while, Gabriel left Los Angeles feeling happy.

Unfortunately, his good mood didn’t make it all the way back to Europe. A curt email landed in his inbox informing him that the United Nations was calling off the investigation into Liao’s death as they felt there was nothing more to be gained from it. He responded with his protests and demands for reasons, suspecting they’d lead nowhere.

 _I’d have already planted people,_ he thought again, a cold dread settling into his gut. He always knew his role would eventually extend to gathering information on their own agents and allies as well as their enemies. It didn’t mean he liked it though. Suspicions had a habit of multiplying on their own and mistrust could poison your entire perspective, until one day you woke up apprehensive of your own reflection.

He could rely on the Strike Team, on Jack, Ana, Reinhardt and Torbjörn, on Gérard and Sojourn, and a few others, but a handful of people out of an organization with hundreds of employees was not enough. He trusted Genji and Jesse in the field, but their pasts still had them in knots. Though both had a strong sense of honor and wouldn’t conscientiously betray the organization, they could be manipulated emotionally and possibly tricked into a vulnerable position.

Gabriel considered the rest of his agents, weighing their integrity and examining the angles from which an organization like Talon could hook them. Despite the headache dogging him, he began shaping contingency plans.

While California’s winter had already capitulated to spring weather, Zürich remained hard and cold, completely dark at 9pm. The change made him dizzy and tired.

He unlocked his apartment door and immediately tensed.

The heating was on. And a light. The book he’d left on the counter had been moved. The chairs around the table had been neatly pushed in. A mug sat on the—

“S’just me,” Jack said, a light slur to his words. “Sorry. Slept here the last two days. Should’ve asked.”

His paranoid assessment of his home aborted, Gabriel slung his bag onto the armchair and noted Jack’s red eyes and 5 o’clock shadow, the rumpled sheets in the bedroom and the garbage can laden with liquor bottles. A half-full one dangled from Jack’s fingers.

“You and Vincent having a fight?”

“We broke up.” Jack’s breath caught, hard and sharp as glass. “Fuck. Saying it out loud just… _Fuck._ ”

“What happened?”

Jack started laughing, harsh with self-hatred, and Gabriel watched him down the rest of the whiskey in one long, painful swallow. He paced the small living room, studying the empty bottle, eyes watery and pale.

“I found a ring. He was planning… And I felt sick, just picturing him down on one knee and me saying… what? I don’t even know.”

“Why would marrying him be a problem? Wasn’t that what you wanted?”

“Because he wants – shit, _wanted_ – us to start a family in Bloomington. He’d expect me to step down in a few years. And…and….”

“You don’t know what you’d do with your life if you weren’t here.” 

Jack knew that Gabriel was thinking of his own divorce. 

“How are we bad people? For wanting to do this? For wanting to make a difference? We managed to neutralize every major gang operation in North America. We’ve saved and improved hundreds of lives. But somehow, it’s very important that I mistakenly messaged his sister congratulations the day _after_ her baby’s first birthday, not the day of. And I…I just don’t know how to care about that. I don’t. And that makes me out of touch—that was the phrase he used—I’m ‘completely out of touch with what’s really important in life’ and I’m ‘saving the world but not living in it’ and what am I supposed to say to that? Yes? I am? You’re welcome?”

Familiar with the violence that Jack’s misery led him to, Gabriel gently unwound his fingers from the bottle and placed it out of the way before saying:

“We’re working with different parameters than most people. Higher stakes. They don’t understand what it’s like to go from life-or-death situations to an office job where the biggest catastrophe is gossipy coworkers or missed deadlines.”

“Yeah. So, here I am.” Jack rubbed his hands over his face, gripped the back of his head, tugged at his hair. “I get to continue making the world better. Just had to break the heart of a good man to do it.”

“No,” Gabriel said, quiet and sad. “You had to break your own damn heart, too.”

“God _damnit!_ ” Jack’s fist went through the wall with a crunch.

A breath of plaster dust puffed from the hole as he drew back to punch it again. Gabriel grabbed his wrist and jerked him off balance, deftly twisting his arm behind him. Jack felt a forearm notch beneath his throat, locking him in place.

“Let go!” He snarled, kicking out as he struggled, knowing it was no contest with the state he was in.

Instead of verbally refusing, Gabriel tightened his hold, felt Jack’s Adam’s apple bob as swallowed.

Jack reached for violence the way he reached for whiskey, a legacy of how his father dealt with weakness; and preventing him from accessing either cracked him open, ugly and raw.

Gabriel switched his grip and let Jack break against him, a wave sobbing onto shore. Jack pressed his face into his neck, gasping terrible breaths. His shoulders shook. Tears wet Gabriel’s skin, warm drops. Whatever energy that was keeping him on his feet slowly drained, and Gabriel caught his weight so they could sink onto the couch instead of crash onto it.

Eyelashes damp, heart and body wrung out, Jack succumbed to sleep still huddled in Gabriel's arms.

The quiet moment stretched on, the only sound Jack’s even breathing. Gabriel remembered how he’d kissed Jack after his divorce and felt a stab of regret for how it drove Jack to commit so hard to his relationship with Vincent. In some ways, this nuclear fallout was just as much his fault as theirs.

He ran his thumb over Jack’s cheek in silent apology. And for the first time, he acknowledged just how bright and fierce his love for this man was. He’d do anything for him, anything to help him keep shining, anything to clear the self-doubt from his gaze. But he owed it to Jack to let him choose for himself what he wanted, without being pushed and pulled by Gabriel’s desires and insecurities. He’d already forced Jack to question his integrity once; he wouldn’t do it again. Though it was undeniably tempting to catch that sweet mouth in another kiss, even with the sour smell of whiskey on his breath.

As expected, Jack’s metabolism burned off the alcohol in less than 30 minutes. His bloodied knuckles healed even faster than that. He woke, feeling addled but surprisingly safe. Larger than Vincent since the SEP, Jack had done most of the holding over the past few years; it had been a long time since he was the one held. Being in Gabriel’s arms felt…nice. Like he could stay here.

It took a few seconds for him to remember that the only reason he was being held was because he’d gotten drunk and belligerent, and the pang of disappointment that sliced through his lungs was simultaneously startling and unsurprising.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, pulling away guiltily.

“Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”

“Yeah… I… Can I stay here?” He asked, rubbing the back of his neck. “Vincent’s already gone but… I just can’t sleep in that bed by myself right now.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Gabriel went through the motions of showering and brushing his teeth, daily rituals that somehow felt excruciating to perform with Jack just on the other side of the door. His head pounded, the ache bad enough that his neck and shoulders were stiff.

When he turned off the light, Jack was already curled up on his side under the covers, staring at nothing.

“Come here,” Gabriel said, sliding in. “You think I don’t remember how badly you need to cuddle when you’re in a shit place?”

“That was wartime.”

“War. Love. Same, same.”

Gabriel tugged him closer and at length, Jack relaxed into the hold, his head pillowed on Gabriel’s shoulder. A miserable sort of exhaustion clung to the younger man. Although he was agonizing over the abandoned future, the plans with Vincent that were now ash in his hands, the dread of explaining things to his family, there was a traitorous kernel of relief as well. _Part of you thinks he’s holding you back_ , Gabriel had said with brutal accuracy. Well, maybe Vincent was.

The physical contact soothed Jack’s nerves, as it always had, the reliable rhythm of Gabriel’s pulse.

But they both knew this was different than the SEP, than the Crisis, than even the drunken kiss they’d shared in New York.

Because now, their hearts weren’t shielded from one another by fidelity to Adriana and Vincent. What had been casual, comfy intimacy now contained a terrifying amount of possibility. If Jack started something, let his hand drift lower or his thigh slide higher, it wouldn’t end with the amicable retreat they had always ended with before. It could lead—

Gabriel hissed and dug the heel of his palm into his forehead, irritated at the tenacity of the migraine. 

“One sec,” he grumbled, climbing out of the bed with the intention of getting ibuprofen from the bathroom.

He never made it there. The floor needed to be cleaned. That was very obvious now that he was laying on it. He heard Jack yelling his name from far away and he had the urge to apologize for worrying him. A few seconds later, warm darkness closed over his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *struggles to leash thirst*
> 
> Uggghhhhh, I wanted so badly for them to kiss in bed, but I committed to a slow burn and it’s gonna burn slow damnit.


	5. Chapter 5

Angela closed her eyes and took a deep breath, the air of her office dry and sterile. Her hands were in fists, shaking.

It wasn’t out of the ordinary for her to be enraged with her superiors. Every other month it seemed, she pleaded with the Strike Commander to explore non-militaristic responses to a crisis before sending in a strike team. She seethed at Captain Amari’s patronizing, the older woman daring to pity her pacifism, as though it was normal to be more comfortable with a gun than with a conversation. She’d been furious when Torbjörn developed the biotic rifle, wounded by the betrayal of a man who was an uncle to her, who should know better than anyone how tools designed for good could be coopted for evil.

But she had never been this angry.

“I… cannot allow this, Commander Reyes.” The words didn’t seem nearly enough to encompass how complete her disgust was. She forced herself to maintain a modicum of civility. “I cannot believe you would even suggest this to me. You must be aware of the fact that I publicly condemned that woman’s work just a few months ago. I know we have yet to find a perfect solution to the chronic breakdown of your laminin, but you’re stable for now.”

“Stable? My cells are coming unglued from each other, you can’t stop it, and you call that _stable_?”

“I am willing to try more experimental modes of treatment within reason. This is not within reason. Collaborating with someone like _her_ is not within reason. We would be betraying the very ideals this organization stands for.”

“Well, I can’t question my ethics if I’m fucking dead, Ziegler.”

“Inviting a person like that into Overwatch would poison our whole reputation and make hypocrites of us. I won’t allow her to work in my labs.”

“So, we’ll keep her in Blackwatch.”

“Blackwatch doesn’t have a medical science division.”

“Guess it does now.”

“This is absurd! We are talking about a woman who values scientific progress over human life. That is the exact same sort of thinking that started the Omnic Crisis.”

Angela gestured with open palms towards where Jack was leaning against the wall, hoping for a dollop of sense from him.

He stared into middle distance, eyes unfocused, arms folded. He barely even looked like himself in an old t-shirt and jeans, stubble on his face and bags under his eyes. A terrible impression of defeat lay in the slope of his shoulders.

Less than a sentence had passed his lips since he followed Gabriel into her office, giving no indication as to where his opinion on this matter lay. Her respect for him, already rickety for how willing he was to solve problems with a pulse rifle, deteriorated further. Strike Commander Morrison was meant to be their shining leader, their inspiration for making the world better. How could he even entertain the thought of allowing a monster like Moira O’Deorain into their ranks?

“Have you seen the accusations about how she achieved her results?” Angela pressed on, queasy. “She’s just as liable to kill you or – or _vivisect_ you as she is to heal you with her ghoulish experiments.”

“I’m dying anyway!” Gabriel barked out. In contrast to Jack’s utter stillness, he paced the width of the small room like a wild animal. “We’ve spoken to every renowned geneticist in the world and none of them have given you a clue how to stop this shit from getting worse.”

“That doesn’t mean there aren’t other _options_!”

“Like making myself comfortable? Like _managing_ and getting by until I fucking deteriorate? You’re more worried about Overwatch’s reputation than my health, which – surprise! – means you’re already a fucking hypocrite. You’d rather ride a high horse and cling to your prissy moral code instead of deal with some potential controversy in order to save my life. So, thank you, doctor, for absolutely fucking nothing.”

He jerked open the sliding door so forcefully it jumped its rail. His footsteps stormed down the hall, echoing off the linoleum.

Angela’s heart pounded and her throat tightened, adrenaline winding her tight. The tips of her fingers were numb.

“Commander, _please_ , you can’t approve of this,” she begged. “You have no idea what O’Deorain will do to him. You have no idea what she’ll demand in return for even attempting to treat him. This woman isn’t a doctor. She’s a geneticist who sees human beings as raw material. Overwatch publicly denounced this woman. Think of what would happen if people learned we then _hired_ her.”

Jack let out a long, slow exhale, but still didn’t say anything. He met her eyes for a brief moment, then left the room.

It was balmy Sunday evening and the citizens of Zürich were active and chipper. He walked without seeing or hearing any of it, walked until the stars fought through the clouds, walked until he found himself staring at bags of coffee in a supermarket. It vaguely registered that he’d made a loop; his natural compass had guided him to the grocery store halfway between his and Gabriel’s flats.

The intense overhead lights bounced off the shiny packaging. And it hit him, it really hit him, that Gabriel was dying.

The paparazzi weren’t as bad these days. As the world stabilized, people began feeding their shallow hungers again and pop stars recaptured the tabloids. So, there fortunately weren’t any cameras to catch him leaving the supermarket with tears streaming down his face. Still, he wouldn’t fall apart in public. He crashed through the door to his apartment, gasping for breath in a way he hadn’t had to since before the SEP, and dry-heaved over the kitchen sink.

The refrigerator hummed. His knees gave out and he buried his face in his hands. The great colorless expanse closed in, an ocean ready to drown him, ready to strip him clean down to his bones, he’d be alone…

No.

He was not going to start bawling and grieving now. Not when there were options left. Not when there was still the smallest chance. Gabriel would not die from this. Not now. He couldn’t. Jack wouldn’t let him.

Eyes burning, he tromped through the kitchen and gathered the ingredients he’d need into a bag, then jogged the two blocks to the walk-up apartment building Gabriel lived in, resisting the urge to run up the stairs, tamping down on the fear Gabriel might have already vanished. He let himself in without bothering to knock.

“I don’t need your fucking mothering, Morrison,” Gabriel growled when the smell of pancakes finally lured him from his bedroom.

“I don’t fucking care, _Reyes_ ,” Jack shot back, trying to ignore how his grip on the spatula trembled.

Gabriel glared but it was half-hearted. His red-rimmed eyes found their way to the floor, and Jack wanted to _kill_ something right fucking now because Gabriel was afraid and there was no accepting that. Jack shoved the pan off the lit burner onto the countertop and hauled Gabriel into his arms.

Gabriel tensed, protested, mocked, tried to extricate himself and finally hugged back so hard Jack couldn’t pull in a full breath. The shoulder of Jack’s shirt grew damp, Gabriel’s back muscles convulsing under Jack’s hands as he tried and failed to keep it all in.

It wasn’t death that frightened him, Jack knew. Soldiers, both of them had made peace with their own mortality a long time ago. Death was inevitable; there was no point wasting time worrying about it.

Death was nothing next to being trapped in a body that was crumbling piece by piece, an illness that stole you from yourself, reduced you to something frail and disgusting in front of the people you loved.

Gabriel wandered to the sink, movements wobbly, and splashed cold water on his face.

“We’ll hire her on a short-term contract as a scientific consultant,” Jack said as Gabriel dried himself off with a tea towel. “That’ll keep her off the books.”

Gabriel stiffened in surprise and spun to look at him. Jack returned to the abandoned stovetop and stirred the batter some more.

“I thought, maybe, you’d agree with Ziegler on this,” Gabriel said, hesitant, voice in shreds.

Angela’s moral code wouldn’t deter Gabriel from saving himself. But Jack’s morals would. A wry laugh lodged in Jack’s throat. Gabriel should know by now that when forced to choose between Gabriel and his own integrity, Jack would choose him every time.

“Don’t be an idiot.”

Jack thought of the kiss he would’ve fallen into had Gabriel not stopped. He thought of lying in bed wrapped in Gabriel’s strong arms, the ache to spend every night that way, all that possibility alive between them – now paused. He would give Gabriel everything; but expecting anything in return was out of the question. He wouldn’t even consider burdening Gabriel with his Pandora’s box of feelings until they’d gotten through this.

The emotional intensity relinquished its grip on them as they worked through the stack of pancakes, discussing the complications of contacting Moira, what compensation they could offer her and how to keep everything well, well under the radar.

“Don’t tell my ex-wife.”

“Because Adriana and I talk all the time.”

“I’m serious though. She doesn’t need to know I’m sick. I don’t want Soli—”

“I know.”

* * *

Gabriel compartmentalized on instinct, locking back into the survival settings that served him during the Crisis. He packed his days and nights so full of work, there simply wasn’t time to break down over his health. He fell asleep at his desk. He streamlined workflow processes. He transcribed his calls with Marisol, a way to practice shorthand and also log his daughter’s cares and preferences. He wrapped his feelings for Jack in tissue paper and put them away.

More than anything he wanted Jack’s mouth on his, the taste of him, the softness of his lips, but he refused to offer himself as he was, splintering to pieces, the future so precarious. If he started something with Jack and then died on him… No, better not to start anything. What could Gabriel offer anyone like this? Besides, what if Jack didn’t want him anymore?

Well, there was no time to think about that because he had a lot of work to get done, not only his official projects but his unofficial one, which lurked in the shadows of his mind at all times. He scrutinized every development within Overwatch and the United Nations. Just as important as tracking what happened was tracking what didn’t happen or nearly didn’t happen.

There was an odd amount of pushback from Adawe’s team on the decision to hire Gérard Lacroix, as well as bizarre objections on bringing Winston into the fold. They were both Chaotic Good, Gabriel realized, upstanding and unpredictable. And hard to kill.

Gérard was sly enough to note the struggle to get his appointment approved. Gabriel knew he’d made the right call when Gérard cautiously brought it up during drinks to celebrate, after the bastards ran out of excuses to prevent him coming onboard.

“Why’d you agree to join then?” Gabriel asked.

Gérard smirked. “Where good people are not wanted is often exactly where they ought to be.”

He took to Blackwatch like a duck to water. Gérard was masterful at not only the logistics of managing their facility in Rome, but also at the double identity, maintaining their white-gray public image to conceal their gray-black core. Only a scant handful of those employed in the facility knew the extent of their missions.

Gabriel let some of the tension ease out of his shoulders. Separating Blackwatch from Overwatch meant splitting up potential attackers’ attention and resources. While not a reason to relax entirely, it did quell his fears of the whole organization going down in a single explosion.

He put almost as much effort as it took to run Blackwatch into making sure Marisol’s five weeks in Zürich went smoothly. And they did, for the most part. The initial few days were awkward, but it wasn’t too hard to charm a kid in a country famous for its chocolate. Though yes, he assured Adriana, Soli was getting her vegetables too.

Gabriel had to admit it still frustrated him how immature his daughter was, obsessed with some boyband and bored by her summer reading assignments. He was looking forward to when she was older and they could build a more intellectual friendship. Though she was also undeniably precious as she was, with her wide brown eyes and mop of black curls.

She’d been shy with Jack at the beginning of her vacation, in spite of how many years she’d known him. He was such a larger than life figure to her generation. But it wasn’t long before she was pestering him for stories and chatting a mile a minute while she painted his toenails. Magenta. Her favorite color. She’d already done all of Gabriel’s nails.

At the end of a tiring slog of a workday, Gabriel found her in Jack’s office, quizzing him on the people in the photos on the walls and spewing facts about her beloved boyband. It amused him to realize that his daughter had a bit of a crush on Jack. He couldn’t blame her. Most people who met Jack went starry-eyed. Himself included.

Gabriel leaned against the doorframe and drawled, “When they ask why the world fell apart, I’ll have to tell them it was because a little bird kept bothering the Strike Commander.”

“I’m learning a great deal about K-pop,” Jack informed him, dropping his pen on his desk and stretching his arms overhead.

Marisol grinned and bopped towards him. “Do you know where Jack’s favorite ice cream shop is?”

“Uh. The milkshake place in Bloomington?”

“No, _here_. His favorite ice cream shop in Zürich. Duh.”

“Why do I get the feeling this is leading into you wanting us to get ice cream?”

Her grin widened. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Boxler’s,” Gabriel said. “The little place four blocks from here.”

“Wow, that’s really nearby,” Marisol chirped. “Since it’s not too far, we should really go get Jack some ice cream because he’s been working so hard.”

“That so?” Gabriel asked, smiling.

“And you’ve been working hard too, so really, we should also get you ice cream.”

“Manipulative little thing, aren’t you?” Gabriel laughed. “Alright, mi corazón. We can go after dinner.”

“Can Jack come, too?” She turned her enormous brown eyes on the Strike Commander. “Pleeeaaaaase?”

“What did I say about whining?” Gabriel groused. “You’re 11, not 6.”

“I would be honored, Soli,” Jack laughed with the ease of an attractive person used to shrugging off invitations, “but I’m afraid I’ve got some things to finish up here.”

She pouted. "Well, we'll get you some anyway."

As Jack watched them leave, he felt a small shard of wonder at Marisol’s existence, this girl that was half Gabriel. He caught glimpses of him in her: the way she cocked her hips in annoyance, the mischievous smile, how deftly she could read people.

Later, Gabriel messaged him to say Marisol was demanding to gift his ice cream to him in person, so he better get his ass out of the office and come over.

Jack chuckled and shook his head. That kid had her father wrapped around her little finger. As he packed up for the night, he examined his own feelings about children. He’d always been fond of them, had overseen a bushel of younger cousins and spent several summers as a camp counselor. He certainly liked the abstract idea of having a child and he adored Marisol, but when he mused on the children he might have been raising with Vincent at that moment had he chosen differently, he was ashamed to find himself unmoved.

Of course, unbidden, the vision of raising a son or daughter with Gabriel blossomed so bright it was painful. The vision of being Marisol’s stepfather. The vision of walking to an apartment like he was doing now, knowing the two of them were waiting for him, looking forward to seeing him after a long day.

It left him breathless, how much he wanted that. Even though it was logistically bullshit impossible and he knew it.

The night was sticky with the threat of rain. He gave himself until he got to Gabriel’s floor to indulge in this domestic fantasy, then he put it away to torment himself with later. Once Gabriel’s health stabilized, he’d reassess how their lives fit together.

“You can’t give him any,” Marisol said, glaring at her father as she withdrew Jack’s ice cream from where she’d stashed it in the freezer. She was showered and in her pajamas. “He already had a whole one to himself. And if I asked him to bring it to you, he’d probably just steal it because he already stole some of mine.”

“I didn’t steal it,” Gabriel protested. “I asked if I could have a bite and you said yes.”

“But then you took the biggest bite ever!”

Leaning against the kitchen counter, Jack snickered and dug into his scoops of chocolate and vanilla with a spoon. The quibbling continued as Gabriel prodded her towards her bedroom and followed her in to give her a kiss good night.

Her prayers said and her lights turned out, Gabriel returned to the kitchen and slouched against the counter with a relieved sigh. He nudged Jack’s side.

“Give me some.”

“Hmm. I don’t know.” Jack looked pointedly in the direction of Marisol’s bedroom.

“Morrison, give me some goddamn ice cream.”

“I’d be disobeying a direct order.”

“Since when do you take orders from Soli?”

“Since they let me avoid sharing my ice cream.”

Jack let out an undignified yelp as Gabriel hip-checked him sideways and he nearly tripped over his two feet.

“Super Egoistical Person,” Jack grumbled.

“Sharing Eases Pain,” Gabriel countered.

“Stout Elephants Perish.”

“Still Expecting Payment.”

He opened his mouth. Jack rolled his eyes but obligingly shoved a spoonful of chocolate into it. Butterflies fluttered inside him at Gabriel’s hum of pleasure, the fan of dark eyelashes against his cheeks. They traded bites and playful jabs until the paper cup was empty.

Gabriel drifted off into that deep blue ocean of preoccupation in the back of his mind.

“You feeling okay?” Jack asked, hating the uselessness of the question, hating the sudden distance Gabriel’s moods could plant between them.

“Ziegler’s got me stable enough for now.”

“So, what’s on your mind?”

“I’ll worry you about it when you need to worry about it. You got enough on your plate.”

For all his love of not being the spot-lit strike commander and his vocal relief to not be responsible for everything, Gabriel still piled metric tons of responsibility on his shoulders. Jack resisted the urge to pry. He trusted Gabriel to keep him informed of critical details and believed him when he said Jack didn’t need to know about something. But Jack couldn’t help feeling like he was being wrapped in cotton, gently stifled and restricted.

“You’re not keeping me ignorant out of some idiotic impulse to keep me safe, right?”

Gabriel let out a soft chuckle. “Hard to keep you safe when you throw yourself balls-first into any mission that has even marginal use you in the field. You know people are terrified you’re going to get picked off.”

Jack shrugged. “Can’t sit in an office all day. Wasn’t exactly what we were designed to do.”

“That’s probably the reason they want to put up that statue of you. So if you die, they can slobber at its feet instead.”

“Don’t be cynical. No harm letting people pretend I’m some icon of hope if it makes them feel better.”

“No harm until it gets you destroyed.”

“Have some faith in me.”

“It’s not you I don’t have faith in.”

The words were kind, but Gabriel was scowling at some unseen enemy, an enemy he was losing sleep over, an enemy he wouldn’t tell Jack the name of.

It occurred to Jack in a sickening slosh that Gabriel might be increasing the distance between them to subtly establish that they were friends and nothing more. Despite several opportunities, Gabriel hadn’t once tried to kiss him since Vincent had left. Maybe that harsh kiss against his bedroom wall really had just been impulsive and mean and meaningless.

Maybe Gabriel worried he’d just be some rebound. Jack had never been able to tell Gabriel that his name had come up more than once during his final, nuclear argument with Vincent, that Jack had found he could no longer honestly deny the accusations. But maybe Gabriel was simply over him. Maybe Gabriel had never really wanted him that way and it was all in Jack’s head, some desperate fantasizing to convince himself he wasn’t going to wind up alone.

When he returned to the dead quiet of his own apartment, he poured himself a measure of expensive whiskey. The smokiness tasted good after the sweet ice cream. The numbness tasted better.

Somehow, Jack dragged his spirits into a pantomime of cheerfulness for the remainder of Marisol’s trip, unwilling to embroil her or Gabriel in his roiling inner landscape. She kissed him on the cheek just before leaving for the airport.

Less than an hour after Gabriel put his daughter on the long plane home to Los Angeles, he hopped on a drop ship to Rome, where Moira was waiting in her pristine new lab on a high-security level of Blackwatch headquarters, her nails pointed and her eyes eager.

“Ziegler wasn’t kidding about her treating humans like raw material,” Gabriel commented, squirreled away in his new office.

The holovid hovering over his desk showed Jack on his couch, working his way through a pizza, eyebrows drawn together in concentration.

“What did she say? Was my blood sample helpful?”

“Yeah. She thinks the reason I’m reacting poorly but you aren’t is less to do with my genes and more to do with us being given slightly different formulas. Cheers to the SEP for not bothering to tell us officers were on a separate regimen. You should see the file they finally agreed to send over. Two thirds of the thing is fucking redacted.”

“At least you got something out of them.”

“I had to play the ‘Remember I helped save the world?’ card _and_ threaten to have glorious Strike Commander John Morrison publicly shit on them before they agreed.”

Jack laughed. The thrum of optimism in Gabriel’s voice warmed him from the inside out, the first shine of hope since he collapsed several months earlier.

“Anyway,” Gabriel continued. “O’Deorain said that while she couldn’t stop my laminin from breaking down, she had several ideas for how to compensate for it. Coating my cells in microscopic bio-nanites could enable them to remain connected, kind of like magnets.”

“Nanobiotics? Sounds a bit like Angela’s tech.”

“We…might need to borrow some of her stuff, yeah.”

“She’s not going to like that. But… Send me some proof that O’Deorain’s solution will actually work and I’ll get her to give you what you need.”

“Might just be easier if you came here. Moira’s very protective of her research.”

Jack pulled up his calendar and squinted at it. “Hm. I could probably do a day in Italy early next week. After the evil scientist reveals her plan to turn you into RoboCop, you can buy me gelato and take me to the National Roman Museum.”

“You are such a nerd.”

That afternoon in Rome turned out to be their last opportunity to see each other in person for months. Between their missions abroad, Jack’s public appearances and Gabriel’s appointments with Moira, their schedules simply never aligned. Though they traded messages, their holovid calls grew shorter and fewer, both too exhausted to chat for more than a few minutes.

At least, that was Jack’s reason. Gabriel withdrew as a creeping sense of dread consumed more and more of his every waking thought. He had nursed a faint hope that Talon would be revealed as more threat than follow-through, more bark than bite, but every clod of filth he dug up had roots connecting it to others. His quiet investigation unearthed not only a list of agents potentially under their thumb, but politicians and business tycoons as well. Handwritten and in code, he logged suspicious patterns in Overwatch's own hiring and training that cropped up, vanished, reappeared. There was also the continued refusal to reopen the investigation into Liao’s murder.

Many of Adawe’s duties were being handed off to a man named Petras, whose reputation was as clean as you could get. On paper anyway. One of his earliest proposals, which the U.N. supported, was to reallocate funds from Blackwatch and the Overwatch strike teams to other divisions. Whether this was an insidious long-term plan of Talon’s or the simple human idiocy of thinking a threat was gone if it hadn’t been seen for a while, Gabriel wasn’t sure.

But it was clear that Talon was a titan. A titan that had reared its head out of the scorched earth of the war, taking advantage of the shattered economies and crippled governments, raking in orphans and creating an empire that sucked the life out of anyone in its path, a cartel built on others’ desperation, organic and cultivated, and fed people’s greed.

Gabriel chewed over strategies to combat Talon’s many heads during the long hours spent in a glass chamber in Moira’s lab, his body completely numb from anesthesia as coats of nanites were applied to his very cellular structure.

Thinking only a titan could kill a titan was simplistic. Elephants were afraid of mice. Humans were afraid of cockroaches. The Omnics had fallen to a small strike team. Fast and small would work better than lumbering bureaucracy. Overwatch was too big. Hell, even Blackwatch was too big. They needed someone on the ground, someone to infiltrate Talon the way they’d infiltrated Overwatch.

It was too risky to reach out to an independent agent. The mercenaries Talon brought into their confidence weren’t the type to be trusted to do the right thing if money spoke louder elsewhere. Who could he send undercover that wouldn’t cause suspicion? Jesse? No, he was the obvious choice. Genji as well.

By the time Jack returned to Rome half a year later, Gabriel’s health had stabilized and he had the beginnings of a very, very stupid idea.

The unspeakable relief Jack felt at seeing Gabriel back to full strength was undercut by the stomach-lurching vision of that body Jack knew so well dissolving in front of his eyes, pooling into smoke. The contained cloud moved across the tiled floor of Moira’s lab with sinuous intelligence, retracted into itself and piled high in front of him until Gabriel was smiling into his shocked face.

“Uh.” Jack blinked a few times. “That’s new.”

“Tempted to try the same thing on myself now,” Moira mused, seeming more witch than geneticist at the moment. “I wasn’t entirely sure how much control you’d have over the dissolution and reassembling process, but it seems I had nothing to worry about.”

That night Jack dreamed his apartment was on fire, black smoke curling around his head and slicking into his mouth. He should’ve been panicking. But instead, he sat down at the table with a drink and let himself be consumed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m gonna give myself a pat on the back for the scene with Angela because I wrote it before “Valkyrie” was released and apparently I was totally on point :D


	6. Chapter 6

Jack’s right ear was still ringing from the blast. A wet trickle over the lobe implied that his eardrum had burst. Funny how that smaller, waspish pain was somehow worse than the broken shinbone. A spray of glass was slowly being pushed out of his skin as his body began the arduous process of stitching him back together.

Between the UN headquarters in downtown Manhattan and the conference held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an explosive tucked under the chassis of the hover car had crumpled the vehicle like newspaper, crunching his ribs closer together and flinging Sojourn through the windshield. He hoped to God she was alright.

He’d woken up in a living cliché. Chained to a chair in an office in a warehouse. Held hostage by the Silverpins, a drug-smuggling cartel that Overwatch was close to crushing. If they ever wanted to see their Strike Commander alive again, they’d withdraw all agents from the gang’s territory and never return. If they tried to rescue him, Jack would be tortured and killed. Blah blah blah. He vaguely wondered if he should be making quips about how he’d been warned New Yorkers were assholes.

Jack squinted through bruised and bloody eyes at the gang members guarding him, clad in green and sporting military-grade assault weapons that only Talon could have supplied. They appeared panicked and confused, staring at the building’s security feeds on an old monitor. The ringing in his ear drowned out most of whatever the apparent leader was ranting about.

Maybe kidnapping and ransom was harder than the movies made it look, Jack thought with an almost delirious giggle.

For a second, he wondered if he’d actually laughed out loud, because the gathered Silverpins whirled around, their guns raised in alarm. Then he realized they were aimed at someone behind him. This was puzzling as he could have sworn his broken body had been placed facing the only door to the room.

A deluge of bullets was fired at whoever the intruder was, more than enough to glue their entrails to the wall.

But a deep, rumbling laugh unrolled like a cold fog

“Death comes.”

The pain stabbing into Jack’s ear canal throbbed as shotgun blasts tore through the half dozen gang members, the grim reaper chunking them down in a swirl of black cloak and sharp edges and glinting steel. Screams were cut short. Red painted the walls and floor, some spattering over Jack.

Adrenaline skittered through his muscles, those combat instincts screaming to life. There was nothing amateur about the way this mercenary moved. An air of military training clung to his maneuvers in spite of the swaggering. He lifted up the one remaining Silverpin, the leader, and growled something at him. The only part Jack could make out was:

“—be thanking you for bringing him to me, but—”

At that range, the shotgun reduced his skull and brain to confetti.

The computer monitor caught Jack’s attention as it flicked between the warehouse’s security feeds. Bodies littered hallways. The Reaper had killed everyone in the building and now it was just the two of them. Jack’s gut lurched as that bone white mask turned in his direction with a dark chuckle.

“Finally.”

Jack straightened up as best he could and glowered. The heavy chains binding his wrists and ankles meant he wouldn’t be fighting back, but he’d be damned if he was going to greet death with his head bowed. The buzzing overhead light gleamed off the twin shotguns.

“You didn’t think I’d forget about you. I’ve been waiting a long time to kill you, Commander,” the mercenary drawled, strolling towards him. He nudged aside a dead Silverpin with his boot. “Nice of these assholes to make it easy.”

“So, you thanked them by killing them all?” Jack coughed out.

“I’d kill whoever I had to for the privilege of taking you out of this world.”

“Get on with it then, you fucking psychopath.”

“I’m not a psychopath,” the Reaper said, smirk audible in the gravelly, modulated voice. “I’m a high-functioning psychopath.”

 _Where the hell was the strike team?_ Gabriel thought with disdain. He’d only wounded the two agents that were infiltrating via the roof. The other three should have finished dispatching them for emergency medical attention and regrouped by now. His back was to the only entrance to the office and he’d casually slung a shotgun onto his shoulder. They had the clearest shot they’d ever have on him.

He’d have to somehow waste more time.

 _I guess Reaper’s going to have a reputation for monologuing,_ Gabriel internally sighed. Recalling his high school theatre teacher’s adage that costumes required larger movements to communicate emotion, he hunched his shoulders and paced and tossed his head in an exaggerated portrayal of fury. He didn’t make the rookie mistake of looking at the lone security camera trained on them.

“I will get my revenge,” he sneered, clenching and unclenching the grips of his firearms, as though he had to physically stop himself from firing. “You took everything from me and Overwatch laughed at my losses when I tried to appeal for help. Loss upon loss. They built you a statue. I’m surprised they didn’t give you a gold crown to wear on that empty head.”

With no shortage of relief, Gabriel heard a quiet step in the hallway.

“Doesn’t matter now. The Reaper’s come for your soul.” He hefted up a shotgun and pressed the muzzle to Jack’s forehead, loving how defiant those blue eyes burned. “Don’t you have anything to—”

Gabriel bellowed in pain as a bullet embedded itself in his right shoulder. He spun as though to face the threat, though his true intention was to rotate out of the field of view of Jack and the security camera so that it was only the bewildered strike team who witnessed him vanish into the black shadows. He wanted confused rumors of wraithlike powers but no evidence. And to avoid Jack discovering Reaper’s identity.

Gabriel slipped through the slats of a vent in the floor, damning the strike team to hell for taking so long. As he cautiously wound his way from the Hudson River towards the densely packed streets of Manhattan, he dwelled on the complexity and long timeline of his scheme, considering and reconsidering angles. The logic was simple enough – he needed a mercenary on the ground to keep an eye on the underworld and no one could do it but him – but he spent every waking minute managing the logistics.

Officially, at the moment he was uncontactable, deep undercover in Panama on a highly clandestine Blackwatch mission, and wasn’t due to return for another two days. That should give him enough time to recover from the shot to his back. And then he had to continue the delicate charade his life had become, remembering the lies he’d told and generating new ones.

It had been actual torture to conceal the Silverpins’ planned abduction from Jack and everyone else. He’d had nightmares for weeks about the car bomb or a trigger-happy gang member killing Jack outright. But there would never again be such an ideal opportunity to present Reaper to the world, to establish his hatred for Overwatch and demonstrate his bloodthirsty efficiency without actually achieving his purported goal of executing the Strike Commander. And hey, it took care of the Silverpins.

That video feed would show exactly what he wanted it to. It was impossible that the Sombra Collective wouldn’t find it and hand it over to exactly the type of people Gabriel wanted most to learn about Reaper. Overwatch’s own intel department tracked down the recording, and before Jack and Sojourn were even out of the hospital, the department heads had a very serious discussion about this dangerous new vigilante.

Months before, Gabriel had determined that a few Overwatch missions had been tampered with by Talon, obfuscating the objectives and fiddling with directives so that even innocent agents helped deliver the wrong goods to the wrong people. He unleashed Reaper on one of these operations and went on something of a rampage, verbosely furious that Jack “got away” and making damn sure everybody with even one foot in the underworld knew that if anyone killed the Strike Commander before he did, there would be hell to pay. Plenty of wiseasses still tried and failed to assassinate Jack, of course, but to Gabriel’s satisfaction, seedy organizations’ chatter about kidnapping plummeted to near zero.

He had no illusions he would be remembered as a hero. But he’d decided when he sold his body to the SEP that he’d do whatever it took to give humanity a future brighter than the present. If Gabriel had to play by Talon’s rules to beat them, he would. If his soul was a pawn to be sacrificed, if civilians were, so be it.

Gabriel was morally compromised; well, so was the world.

Jack had been oddly withdrawn in the months following Reaper’s debut, a cloud covering his sunny disposition. To most of their agents, the Strike Commander was his usual self, albeit slightly subdued. It was only Gabriel and Ana who picked up on the true extent of how unsettled he was, noticing the way his eyes unfocused when he was alone, his mind reeled elsewhere.

However, Overwatch’s slow suffocation consumed them all. None of them had time to sit down and talk through their troubles. Not when Petras was pushing for Reinhardt’s retirement. Not when bad press – a blend of ugly truths and uglier falsehoods – was pulling their reputation out from under them. Not when more and more missions ended in deaths and disasters.

A messy incident in Oslo involving Talon made international headlines. In response, Adriana rescinded Gabriel’s rights to take Marisol out of the United States.

The holovid, bright in Gabriel’s dark apartment, washed out his ex-wife’s skin tone. Her lips were set in a thin line. She was ready for Gabriel to retaliate, to yell and swear and threaten.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, hunched in resignation, his voice as lifeless as she’d ever heard it. “Representatives from the Eyewitness Protection Program will be visiting your house this evening. You and Soli are going to change your names and – and never contact me again.”

Adriana gaped at him, speechless for nearly a solid minute before she exploded:

“You can’t do this to us! I told you! I told you that if you led Blackwatch that it would ruin our lives! This is completely fucking unacceptable! I’m not doing this!”

“There’s no other way to keep Marisol safe from Talon. They’ll go after her to get to me.”

“Well, find a way! Give us bodyguards or something because Soli’s in a really good place in her studies right now and I refuse to nuke my entire fucking career because you—”

“Adriana, _please_.”

The wetness in Gabriel’s eyes shut her up. The only other time she had seen that wrenching expression on his face was at his father’s funeral. She swallowed hard.

“You…You better say goodbye to Soli,” she said at long last, breathless from shock. “I’ll go get her.”

The next few minutes were the hardest of Gabriel’s life.

Marisol was old enough to understand the rationale behind such a drastic decision, but still young enough for her emotions to devastate her. She sobbed and pleaded, her brown eyes dripping with tears. He made awful promises, told her it would only be a few years, that it was just until the threat passed. All lies. Talon would always have her in their sights.

This was the last time he would ever speak to his daughter.

Gabriel delayed hanging up for as long as he could, until he couldn’t bear it anymore. In the quiet that followed, he could hear his own heart splitting in half. But a grim feeling of peace nosed up beneath the despair. Marisol would be safe. That was all that mattered.

Night had settled snugly over Zürich by the time Gabriel staggered out of his bedroom on numb legs.

He was startled to find Jack sitting at his kitchen table, staring at the surface of the wood with vicious intensity. Gabriel wasn’t sure whether to be more or less unsettled by the absence of alcohol on Jack’s breath. He was sober as a stone and just as cold.

“You told me two days ago that Blackwatch was executing a wide variety of strategies to attack Talon’s sources of funds. You said you were confident in the long-term plans to dissolve their organization. But apparently Talon has become enough of a threat that you’re sending Adriana and Marisol into witness protection? Jesus Christ, Gabe, why didn’t you _tell_ me?”

“I tell you what you need to do your job,” Gabriel said, defensive. “You don’t need to hear about every unhappy little detail.”

“I don’t need to hear about how you’re ripping your own life to shreds for Overwatch? You can’t do that to yourself.”

“You’re one to talk,” Gabriel retorted, but there was no heat behind it.

There was a strange glint in Jack’s eyes, something manic, something Gabriel wasn’t sure he understood.

“What was that Shakespeare quote you used to say?” Jack asked in a quiet voice. “ _I hold the world but…_ ”

“ _I hold the world but as the world / A stage where every man must play a part / And mine is a sad one._ ”

“That was from that play you did in senior year of high school, right?”

A seed of dread took root in Gabriel’s gut, even as he nonchalantly replied, “Yeah. _The Merchant of Venice._ Why?”

Jack slammed both fists into the table, fissuring the wood with a wrenching crack. On instinct, Gabriel stepped back and into a defensive stance.

“You are so fucking stupid,” Jack hissed, standing.

Gabriel had seen this cold fury radiating from Jack on a handful of occasions, but not once had it ever been directed at him. That dread burst into toxic blooms. The worst part was that Gabriel could think of several things he’d done that would make Jack this angry.

“It’s funny,” Jack said, voice shaking. “Something Reaper said sounded strange to me: _Loss upon loss_. What a fucking coincidence that that’s also from _The Merchant of Venice._ ”

White noise filled Gabriel’s chest cavity, a chemical blend of defiance and regret. Trust Jack to tear open months upon months of careful planning and secrecy and strategy with just three words.

“Would you like to tell me what the actual _fuck_ is going on?”

Gabriel eyeballed the corners of the kitchen and snatched his housekeys off the counter.

“No,” he said, heading for the front door.

Jack scrambled after him but Gabriel dissolved into smoke before he could grab his shoulder. He unfurled outside in the hallway and didn’t fully reassemble until he was in the stairwell. The door of his apartment slammed open and Jack stalked after him, red-faced with fury.

Gabriel glared and put a finger to his lips before jerking his thumb upwards.

Panting like a bull, Jack nevertheless obeyed and said nothing as he followed Gabriel up to the roof. It was drizzling and cold, the banks of cloud glowing with city light. Gabriel made sure to shut the safety door behind them hard enough that it locked and did a sweep of the rectangular area, making sure no one was hidden behind the blocky generator.

Jack quivered as he waited, stowing away Gabriel’s paranoia of listening devices to examine later. He uppercut Gabriel in the gut as soon as he got close enough. The punch wasn’t unexpected, but it still knocked the wind out of him. Hunched over and coughing, Gabriel half-expected Jack to follow it up by grabbing his head and kneeing him in the face, but he didn’t.

“Talk, Reaper.”

“I needed a mercenary on the ground.”

“You attacked Overwatch operations. You killed agents.”

“I attacked two operations, both of which were already corrupted by Talon. We were delivering resources to the wrong people. Those agents were traitors.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to execute them! There are laws for dealing with things like this, for Christ’s sake. We’re not guerillas fighting machines anymore. Why didn’t you warn us so we could stop those operations and arrest the agents?”

“Don’t you get it? Talon doesn’t play by the rules. Jailtime means nothing when their leadership can bail them out within hours. We are not going to defeat them unless we change tack. And usually it’s fine for me to go around executing other people in Overwatch’s name, so you’ll forgive me if my parameters aren’t as clean as yours.”

“There is no point to defeating Talon if we _become_ them. You put a gun to my head!”

Gabriel grit his teeth. “What the hell do you think all that pontificating was for? I was wasting time until the strike team could get their heads out of their asses and save you.”

“This is the most convoluted _bullshit_ you’ve ever come up with!”

“This will work.”

“It won’t. By playing their game, we’re already losing.”

“This isn’t chess, Jack!”

“No shit!”

“Infiltrating Talon is the only way to bring them down and the only way to do that is—”

“To become a mass murderer? Jesus Christ, are you even listening to yourself?”

The fight cracked back and forth with the vicious sting of a livewire, accusations biting skin. This was the worst argument they’d had in years, possibly ever. And they got nowhere. The quarrel ended in the same place it began, now with each of them close to hating the other's way of viewing the world. Jack broke the lock on the roof door as he jerked it open, unwilling to hear the end of the sentence Gabriel had been in the middle of yelling at him.

By the time Jack got home, damp and shivering, it was nearly dawn. He felt scraped clean, numb, alone. He stood in his living room, dripping onto the floor, unable to take another step, utterly paralyzed. Jack couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this hollowed out.

Oh wait, yes, he could. When Vincent had thrown the engagement ring at his face and stalked out of the apartment.

Jack started laughing. The hysterics gripped his whole body, until he was on his knees, bent over, clutching his stomach because he was laughing so hard, it was hurting.

He was so fucked.

Gabriel wasn’t even sort of a rebound. He never had been. Never would be. Jack had been in love with Gabriel since he’d looked up at the balcony with another man’s blood on his hands to find Gabriel staring at him like he wanted to devour Jack whole.

Jack lay on the floor, eyes unfocused, struggling to pin down what to do, his mind cycling without traction. Morality dictated honesty. He should turn Gabriel in. As though justice was that simple. Turning him in would just isolate him, remove his resources and get him killed. It would damn him to become Reaper full time. Because Gabriel would slip arrest with ease and would never stop fighting to take down Talon. So, what could Jack do besides nothing? He returned to work with ash in his mouth and avoided Gabriel as much as possible.

Less than one month later, Blackwatch headquarters exploded, rubble and smoke in Roman streets. And Jack found himself standing over rows of coffins in a cold hangar, slowly growing nauseated by the new polyester smell of the flags he lay over them, thinking that Gabriel might have a point.

Gabriel had the grace not to bring it up, in part due to Jack’s evident decision to say nothing about Reaper. Their blow-out on the roof hovered beneath their discussion on the best way to respond to this overt attack from Talon.

As they brushed the wrinkles out of flags, Jack said, in careful words, “Gabe…I can’t officially sanction something like this.”

“Not officially,” Gabriel intoned, grateful for Jack’s tacit permission but depressed it had come to this. “No one will ever know Blackwatch was there.”

“I’ll leave the final call to you, but ask yourself…In the long run, will this help keep Overwatch and the world safe?”

Gabriel returned his gaze. “You know I live by that.”

The dropship left for Venice five hours later.

By morning, Overwatch had taken a blow Jack knew it would never recover from.

They were looking down the barrel of a gun. He could already see everything they'd built cracking, in Ana’s cynicism, Reinhardt’s exhaustion, Torbjörn’s bitterness, the sulking news cycle, the red tape creeping around them, lethal as a python. They were never meant to be world leaders. They’d been a strike team, a mobile combat unit thrust into these roles. Maybe they’d been doomed from the start.

The debriefing ate up the entire day. The sun set without any of them seeing it. Gabriel was difficult, cooperating only as much as he had to, insisting this had been the only way to solve things, denying that he acted out of vengeance. They went around in angry circles, ignored the PR team banging on their door, and eventually decided Blackwatch would be grounded until further notice.

Jack returned to his office, buzzing with emotions too fast for him to follow, relief and fury battering his ribcage, sending smoke up his throat. He couldn’t think. He didn’t hear the knocking. As soon as Gabriel stepped inside, haggard but still alive, something short-circuited in Jack’s brain.

Jack kissed him like he was throwing a punch.

Gabriel froze, all at once registering Jack’s hand on the back of his head, Jack’s teeth against his lips, Jack heatedly exhaling through his nose.

And then Jack was pacing the length of the small space, agitated and angry, reiterating his accusations of irresponsibility from the debriefing. 

“You were meant to bring him in. We were meant to deal with this in a lawful way,” Jack ranted, almost to himself.

Gabriel blinked at him, wondering if he’d hallucinated the kiss. He responded on autopilot. “There was no way we were getting Antonio out of the city. This was the only way to stop him, to send a message to the rest of Talon.”

“You exposed our blacks ops division to the entire world! Do you have any idea how much legal shit we’re going to be in? Bad press is going to be the least of our worries. This could destroy us! Our funds were already drying up thanks to the faith lost in the Slipstream incident and we’re going to be positively bankrupted now.”

He was so worked up he was shaking.

“Jack…”

“They’ll probably try to litigate and audit the whole organization for breaking international law. We’re going to have our hands tied for months. They’re already calling for your arrest and God _damnit_ , you’re a stealth expert and you decided to shoot your way out of the city? What the hell is wrong with you? Have you reviewed the footage of how many near-misses your team had in that fire fight? You haven’t come this close to dying on a mission in years and do you have ANY fucking idea what I’d do if I lost you?”

Gabriel’s stomach lurched at the expression on Jack’s face.

The moment lingered, stiff and undefined.

Gabriel’s wide-eyed stare slammed Jack back to earth, alerted him that he’d said too much, revealed too much. He let out a short, incredulous huff at his own astonishing stupidity. Because it was clear Gabriel had seen everything in that short slip, a glimpse straight into the messy center of him.

Gabriel had trained dozens of agents in sophisticated interrogation techniques and could read body language as easily as road signs. He understood what fear masquerading as fury looked like, knew when he’d tapped something real and volatile, recognized the panic of someone who had unwittingly exposed what mattered most to them.

More than that, he knew what Jack looked and sounded like in his rawest, unfiltered forms.

Possibility and potential and deadly hope collided in his chest with the force of a supernova, left him speechless, made him forget Rialto even existed.

Jack took a steadying breath and rubbed his eyes, wondering what else would be destroyed today. All he could do was hope their friendship – what was left of it – would survive him loving Gabriel too much, pray that Gabriel could forgive him for that.

“Fuck. Sorry, that— That was inappropriate.”

“Holy shit, Jack,” Gabriel said, disbelief plain on his face.

“I know. Sorry. I don’t want this to…”

Gabriel dragged a hand over his face, low chuckles rumbling out of him. Jack grit his teeth, feeling the back of his neck flare hot. He sweated beneath his clothes.

Gabriel closed the short distance between them, and Jack tried not to wince in preparation for whatever was going to come next, tried to ignore the way his pulse thudded at the proximity, the smell of him. He tried to keep his eyes on Gabriel’s, resisting the urge to stare at his lips.

When Gabriel spoke, it was with slow and deadly seriousness.

“Do you _actually_ think there's a chance in _hell_ that I’m not in love with you too?”

Jack, who had been tensing with every word, shuddered, a full body spasm, as though every cell in his veins exploded all at once. That tightness in his lungs, poised to become barbed wire, snapped loose in surprise. He couldn’t have heard that right.

“What?”

Gabriel gave him a look that made Jack’s heart stumble in his chest. The temperature in the room climbed higher. And Jack gave into the urge to glance at Gabriel’s mouth.

“You better not be fucking with me,” Jack said, voice rasping, the ragged edge betraying just how badly he wanted this.

They were so close, but they weren’t touching yet. The air between them burned. Jack white-knuckled the edge of his desk as Gabriel moved nearer. Their noses grazed. Gabriel’s lips just barely brushed his, careful, gentle, warm.

A sharp inhale and Jack was opening his mouth, pushing up into him, a dam crumbling, a slow break, unleashing all the implications and possibilities hinted at in their previous kisses.

Their first had been swaddled in delirium on an SEP bunk, the briefest touch of Jack’s lips, ice cold, while he huddled into Gabriel’s chest like Gabriel was the only thing in the world standing between him and death. Gabriel’s fear had weighed heavier than anything.

That kiss of heady happiness on the street, drunk on joy and victory and love that was as all-encompassing and indescribable as air.

Gabriel’s possessive kiss after his divorce, a dark signifier of what they’d both already known, that their connection would outlast anything and anyone else.

Jack’s earlier kiss had been rash and impulsive, an emotion’s violent escape from its cage.

This kiss was nothing like the ones before it. It was measured, rich and savored, unsullied by panic or fear or delirium. It was the culmination of years of aching, decades of winter touched by the first blush of spring sun.

Any chance of the kiss being written off as another act of platonic affection vanished as Gabriel’s tongue inched forward, only to be barreled over by Jack’s, as eager as if it was his first kiss, reminding Gabriel of Jack bounding across the lobby of that hotel in New York to fling himself into his arms. A lump of affection formed in Gabriel’s throat. The dense layers of the different types of love they’d had for each other shifted and melded together, pieces of steel melting in a forge to form something strong and new.

The kiss simmered into something deeper, something molten. The realization that they both wanted it, that they’d both _been_ _wanting_ it, burned hot and gold in their veins.

Jack broke it off with an abrupt twist of his head.

“You can’t do this to me,” he breathed, a plea like shattered glass. “Not now. Not after today.”

Gabriel studied him for a long second, debating something with himself. Coming to a decision, regret barely hidden, he nodded. A short sigh and his hands slid off Jack’s shoulders. With reluctance, he backed off.

Jack watched him, still clinging to the edge of his desk as though it was the only thing preventing him from falling off a cliff.

Gabriel resolved to do his best to keep Jack out of the cesspool expanding beneath their feet, to keep him safely ignorant, to keep lying to him if it meant Jack would continue fighting the good fight. Gabriel’s soul might have been a pawn to be sacrificed, but he wouldn’t drag Jack down with him.

He turned, took one step, then another.

He reached for the door.

A hand latched onto his wrist.

Jack collided with him, kissing him hard and frantic, the sharp edge of his need cutting clean into Gabriel’s core.

Gabriel melted, the heat in his bones softening his posture until he could fit against Jack, mold himself to that hard body, feel the fluttering of his pulse under his fingers.

Realistically, keeping Jack out of the loop was the better option, the simpler option, to exclude him from Gabriel’s compromised morals and sickening plans. If Gabriel let Jack in, he’d have to let him all the way in. Starting something now would wreck both of them, send them down a path they couldn’t come back from.

But Gabriel couldn’t do it. He couldn’t push Jack away.

Trust Jack to tear open months upon months of careful planning and strategy with just a kiss.

All the reasons not to do this surged up. It was the absolute wrong thing to be doing and the wrong time to be doing it. If they were caught, if the press got wind of this, the deluge of accusations of favoritism and biased leadership would…

Jack gripped the nape of Gabriel’s neck hard enough to bruise, low noises catching in his throat as Gabriel’s hands slid up his back beneath his clothes, warm and rough palms on his bare skin, strong arms holding him close. God, it was everything.

Gabriel pulled back just to look at him, to take in the flushed face and blue eyes fogged with desire and that it was _Jack_. He wanted every heartbeat of him. Gabriel caught his lips again. They were tender and pliant against his own, relenting, letting him in. Jack’s body was just the same, hot and insistent and opening for him. Greedy, rushing desire drove Gabriel forward while Jack hauled him closer.

The ghost of ecstasy sizzled their nerve endings as hardness met hardness. Fantasy broke through into reality. Jack bit out a breath, astonished, his thoughts too slippery to hold onto. Gabriel kissed at the corners of his mouth, beard soft against his overheated skin.

“The amount of times I wanted to bend you over this desk…” Gabriel said with filthy seriousness.

“What’s stopping you?” Jack rumbled, lips swollen, eyes hazy.

Gabriel groaned and ground his hips forward, the pressure and overheated friction making Jack’s eyelids shut in want. But Gabriel used the grip on Jack’s hips to push him backwards.

“I am buying you dinner first.”

Jack’s brain took a second to process that, and then he rasped out a laugh.

“Really? Paranoid Gabriel Reyes wants to eat food prepared by someone else in a public place?”

“I have my reasons,” he murmured, forehead resting against Jack’s. “Fuck, I love you.”

Gabriel said those words as though he’d never have a chance to say them again. Jack stiffened in spite of the joy leaping in his belly, sensing those hidden levels that Gabriel always operated on. He was on the verge of pushing for the whole truth, but there was no other answer. There never had been. There never would be.

“I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, my lovely readers! Your kudos and comments sustain me <3


	7. Chapter 7

Gabriel, as always, had a plan.

He insisted the two of them change into casual clothes, which meant returning to their separate apartments and showering. Jack did so with no shortage of incredulity, unable to keep a smile off his face despite the voice in the back of his head repeating that this was the last thing he should be feeling and doing the day after Blackwatch was exposed to the world.

His moral code was a swarm of bees inside him, impossible to ignore. He turned off the water and stood in the light steam, a dozen emotions warring with each other. He’d meet Gabriel at the restaurant, as promised, but then he’d have to tell him this couldn’t happen. Even as he resolved to do so, Jack checked himself in the mirror, making sure he looked alright.

The burger place Gabriel had chosen was in a part of Zürich that Jack had never been to, a bustling district of tourists and rowdy locals having a night on the town. The crowds were just thick enough to disappear into, if needed, and just distracted enough that Jack went unnoticed under the brim of his baseball cap.

His stomach did a giddy flip when he saw Gabriel leaning against the restaurant’s brick exterior, waiting in jeans and a white hoodie unzipped over a tight red t-shirt. He’d forgone the beanie and also sported a baseball hat, and that was all apparently disguise enough that passers-by didn’t connect him with the blurry footage from the Overwatch scandal everyone was reading about on their devices.

Nevertheless, Gabriel did attract some lingering glances, not because he was recognized but because he was gorgeous. Jack had spent years driving away his impulse to devour Gabriel with his eyes and it was easy to forget how handsome he was in the context of their harried work relationship. But now, a smug sort of glee rushed over Jack at the knowledge that that was _his_ date.

Catching sight of him, Gabriel looked him up and down with a sultry smile, and Jack’s glee popped like fireworks, hot sparks in his belly. Their incredible familiarity with one another had something new to it, a hint of uncertainty, just enough to add a strange thrill to each other’s presence.

Jack was in a navy henley and a leather jacket, and Gabriel wanted to touch him, so he did, because he could, because Jack was touching him back, mouth soft and hot on his. Tilting their heads around the baseball hats, they kissed like idiots in the middle of the sidewalk.

Gabriel reluctantly pulled back, one hand still splayed beneath Jack’s ear, thumb stroking over the flushed skin. Those blue eyes opened and Gabriel nearly lost himself in them. It was all he could do to tip his head towards the restaurant’s entrance.

The bar area was dimly lit, noisy with a soccer game and the fans glued to it. Even the waiter had one eye on the screen as he showed them to a table in the corner where they both could sit with their backs to the wall. A single low-hanging ceiling lamp illuminated the tabletop, keeping their faces in partial shadow and allowing them to remove their caps.

Jack nearly snorted at how perfect it was for staying incognito without it appearing intentional. He wondered how many restaurants and bars Gabriel had clocked as good spots for clandestine meetings, and was reminded that this was the Blackwatch Commander, this was the combatant who didn’t operate in plain sight, and it was the day after Gabriel had delivered Overwatch the biggest blow to its reputation yet.

Jack’s morals closed in on him, buzzing angrily, a stinging blockade preventing him from falling headfirst into his infatuation for this man.

“Gabe…About what happened in Venice…”

“Later. Not here.”

Jack’s temper flared. “Well then, what are we doing here?”

“I can’t just take you on a date?” Gabriel asked with a rueful smile.

“I know you better than that. Give me some credit.”

Gabriel studied him for a few seconds. “Why don’t you flag down our waiter?”

“Why don’t you do it?”

“Because I enjoy making the Strike Commander do things for me.”

Jack rolled his eyes but craned around to survey the crowded restaurant for their server. The flicker of comprehension in Jack’s body language was so subtle, Gabriel knew he was the only who would have noticed.

After the waiter took their orders and departed, Jack scooted closer to Gabriel and shamelessly kissed him. Gabriel leaned into it with a sigh.

“We’re being tailed.” Jack’s mouth ghosted over Gabriel’s. “Looks like our own security but…”

“Something’s off?” Gabriel smiled and gazed into Jack’s eyes. “Why do you think I’m buying your ass dinner instead of cooking for you?”

“Thought you already swept our apartments for bugs,” Jack murmured.

Gabriel laced his fingers through Jack’s and brought their joined hands to his lips. “Can’t be sure I found everything. Our offices are probably bugged, too, but I’m betting the juicy discovery of us hooking up will distract Talon from realizing we’re collaborating to take them down.”

Jack blinked, his whole body going cold. The image of Gabriel with his nose bloodied in the SEP gym surfaced in his mind. Gabriel would injure, maybe even destroy, them both if it was for the greater good.

“Ah,” Jack said, swallowing hard, his gaze and his shoulders sinking low. “All this was just… an act to get us out here?”

Fear shot through Gabriel’s veins. His grip on Jack’s hand compulsively tightened.

“Jack, look at me. Please.”

After a long tortuous second, Jack did, prepared for the blow to his heart, steeling himself for an apologetic lecture on the necessities of multi-leveled subterfuge and a reminder that their souls weren’t as important as victory.

Gabriel would burn down the whole restaurant, the whole city, the whole world to clear the pain and doubt in those eyes.

“I have meant _every_ damn word I’ve said to you tonight,” he said, terrified that Jack wouldn’t believe him, knowing Jack had good cause not to. “I think I’ve been in love with you since you beat the shit out of Solder: 53 in the hand-to-hand tournament. Obviously, we were both taken, so I tried to ignore it but – and I know when I kissed you after my divorce, it was for all the wrong reasons, but God, do you have any idea how often I’ve replayed that moment? I kept wishing I’d done it differently, been less of an asshole. Or more of an asshole. Part of me wishes I’d pushed.”

Jack’s heart, so close to shattering, glowed with relief so sharp and bright it was breathtaking.

For all his talent at galvanizing others with stirring speeches, words escaped him when it came to his rawest emotions. All he could do was bring his forehead to Gabriel’s in some attempt to absorb and echo the intensity and sentiment. He let out a wobbly breath and a smile as beautiful as the dawn spread over his face.

Gabriel dispensed with the rambling to catch his lips in another kiss, soft and warm and all-consuming. And honest. Wrapped up in each other, they took no notice when their pints of beer arrived.

“You really think I couldn’t have devised another way to trick you into getting a burger with me?” Gabriel teased as they broke apart. “Give me some credit.”

“I don’t know.” Jack picked up his drink. “You have some pretty dumb ideas sometimes.”

“Jack, I—” Gabriel hesitated. “If we’re doing this, if we’re really doing all this, I need you to trust me.”

It was a tall order and they both knew it.

Reaper’s existence, the catastrophe in Venice, concealing the extent of Talon’s infiltration… Jack had no shortage of reasons to reserve doubts about Gabriel’s intentions. It wasn’t impossible that he was using Jack to further some unknown means now, that convincing the Strike Commander he loved him was somehow part of a long game to accomplish an unseen objective.

But Gabriel kissed him like it was the end of the world and the beginning of everything. And in the pit of his soul, Jack knew that even if this somehow was all a ruse, he would choose to believe the lie. He’d always been Gabriel’s, even when Jack outranked him, even when Jack held someone else at night, even when Jack’s principles insisted he could never _be_ Gabriel’s.

“Okay.”

He clinked his glass against Gabriel’s. As though it was as simple as that. He was determined to try and make it as simple as that.

The lager intoxicated their systems with all the power of ginger ale, but it was cold and refreshing. A lull settled over them, their shins pressed together under the table.

“So,” Jack said. “Us. Together.”

“Yeah.”

“You’d think I’d have seen it coming earlier.”

Gabriel let out a huff of laughter. “I should warn you, my relationships don’t usually work out. I have this thing where I care about my job too much.”

“That’s so funny. I have the exact same problem.”

“How about that.”

“What are the odds this doesn’t end badly?” Jack asked, only half-kidding.

“Does it matter?”

Their food arrived, a pair of enormous burgers with piles of fries that they fell on gracelessly, talking with their mouths full, boys with each other instead of esteemed men. Jack allowed the joy he’d felt earlier to envelope him, sunny and real. He sensed Gabriel giving himself permission to relax as well. The odds of them getting the chance to go on many more dates was slim, so they pushed aside everything else and just enjoyed it.

Conversation flowed on, easy and earnest. The permission to be completely honest with each other was a delicious high, though the bliss was hemmed in by the awareness of their pursuers and by the knowledge that as real as their joy was, it was also part of a necessary act.

They paid and grabbed a self-driving hover taxi to take them to a hotel. In spite of the cameras installed in the cab, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, their kisses turning messy and urgent. Jack wound his arms around Gabriel’s neck, needing him close. Gabriel hooked Jack’s thigh and dragged him across his lap, spiking the body heat between them. Hardness met hardness and Jack groaned into Gabriel’s mouth. Gabriel resisted the urge to dip his fingers into the back of Jack’s jeans, instead slid them up under his shirt to flatten his palms on the burning skin of his lower back. Jack arched into the glittering feeling of skin-on-skin contact, fixated on every stroke and glide and press of Gabriel’s hands on him.

Gabriel felt like laughing. He’d known everything about Jack, everything he’d been allowed know, everything a friend and brother-in-arms could know. From lingering childish habits to the smell of his sweat to the amount of sugar he put in his coffee. He knew what Jack’s impatience, fear, anger, glee, sadness and a million other emotions looked like. He knew where his soft spots and calluses were, not just physically but mentally, which news stories would upset him the most, which tragedies he’d simply accept and move on.

It seemed hysterically funny and wonderful that there was this whole new realm of Jack to discover, like finding an unexplored room of your house. There was a whole host of sensations and reactions to catalogue. The taste of him. The impatience and insistence with which he kissed, angling his head to better access Gabriel’s mouth. The way his breathing hitched when the pads of Gabriel’s thumbs ran over his hipbones. Gabriel drank in every drop of him, hoping this wasn’t his only chance and knowing it might be.

It was fortunate that it was such a short taxi ride or by the time they drew up to the hotel, the bulges in their jeans would have been too notable to hide. As it was, Gabriel made a low noise of disappointment when Jack’s weight disappeared from his lap and needed a few moments to steady himself.

The hotel was another calculated choice, a mid-range place with at least a hundred rooms, enough that the staff couldn’t keep track of all the guests’ faces and weren’t paid enough to be that attentive anyway.

Gabriel fed the concierge one of his counterfeit passports along with a smooth story about how the rest of their family would be joining with the luggage in a few hours but that he’d pay for three rooms now. With an exasperated sigh, he also asked if there was any way the rooms could all be on different floors because his parents were homophobic assholes and he’d recently had a huge falling out with his brother over the family finances, so he wanted every little bit of distance he could get from them on this vacation.

Jack kept quiet, playing the part of a sullen spouse. While Gabriel’s ease and talent at slipping into a character probably should have challenged Jack’s decision to trust him, Jack couldn’t help marveling at how competent he was. It had been a long time since he’d seen Gabriel’s persuasive arts at work.

When the two of them were alone in the elevator, Gabriel punched the buttons of all three floors, then fanned the room keys like playing cards. Jack picked one at random. Even if their pursuers did eventually manage to track them to the correct room, it would take time. Enough time for Gabriel to say what he needed to say.

Jack valiantly managed to keep his hands to himself as they navigated the hallway.

“Is this to your taste?” Gabriel asked sardonically. “It was impossible to find a pick-up truck and a field at such late notice.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jack laughed.

Their door unlocked with a swipe of the keycard and Gabriel barely managed to insert it into the slot on the wall before Jack’s mouth was burning a line up the column of his throat. Jack kissed and licked his way to the tender skin just below Gabriel’s ear, tasting how the pulse quickened beneath his lips. Fuck, he smelled good. Masculine and familiar. Jack breathed him in.

Their baseball caps joined the white hoodie and leather jacket on the floor. Gabriel’s hands found their way beneath Jack’s henley again, fingertips dragging over the taut plane of his belly and the curve of his waist, thumbs following the vee of his pelvis into his jeans.

The sureness and strength and heat of those hands made something inside Jack vibrate like a plucked guitar string. His own motions faltered as he soaked in the feel of them on his overheated skin. It was almost embarrassing how worked up he was getting from some light touching. But then, it was unbelievably astoundingly astonishingly _Gabriel_ who was touching him, a daydream come to life after nearly two decades. It was dizzying. Even more incredible, Gabriel was melting under his touch as well, his former commander and best friend urging him closer.

“Wait,” Gabriel breathed, even as he squeezed and stroked up Jack’s sides. He wet his lips and said again, more firmly, “Wait. Jack, we need to talk.”

Jack made a frustrated noise, but gradually drew back so they could make eye contact, their bodies cooling from the pinch of distance inserted between them.

“You better be planning on actually using this room for more than just talking,” Jack said, the jibe undercut by his shortened breaths.

At the sight of Jack’s face – pupils blown wide, lips reddened, cheeks flushed pink – Gabriel crumbled and crushed their mouths together in a ferocious kiss. A growl lodged in the back of Jack’s throat. Gabriel’s tongue thrust against his and he met it feverishly. Desire roared through both of them like hellfire.

After several long indulgent minutes, Gabriel broke away, his reluctance very evident. He ran a hand over his mouth and forced himself to step back from the intoxication of Jack’s body, wondering if that was the last time he’d ever feel it against his.

The hotel room was as basic and uninspired as you could get. A standard double bed, a lamp on an end table, a piece of nondescript art on the wall, a desk with an old holovid projector and a chair – all in shades of beige, cream and pale blue. Gabriel crossed to the window and leaned his forehead against the cool glass. He heard Jack enter the bathroom.

When he emerged with two glasses of water a few minutes later, he found Gabriel sitting on the edge of the bed. Jack tactfully chose to settle into the chair.

“Taking a leaf from my book?” Gabriel asked, gesturing at the water.

“What?”

“Props can diffuse tension during a conversation. Holding something gives people a minor feeling of control.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “I was just thirsty and thought you might be, too.”

Gabriel accepted the glass with a smile that then took on an anxious slant.

“You’re not going to like this part.”

“Go on,” Jack said, resigned.

“I… exposed Blackwatch on purpose yesterday.”

A serious expression stole over Jack’s face as he weighed this information, the low twang of his arousal subsiding. Gabriel took a drink of water.

“Well,” Jack said at length. “I guess that’s better than you actually thinking assassinating Antonio and shooting your way out of Venice was a good idea.”

“It _was_ a good idea. Just for different reasons. Moira’s working with Talon.”

“And she came so highly recommended,” Jack deadpanned.

“On the dropship, she made an offhand comment about how useful a mercenary like Reaper would be on a mission like this, how his tactics were something ‘we’ needed. She was fishing for my compliance. I needed a way to make her think I was playing into her hands but also get her ousted from Overwatch.”

“You still intend to join Talon?” Jack asked, tensing.

“Do you have a better strategy?” Gabriel showed him his palms. “I’m seriously asking. Between the Sombra Collective and Maximilien, Talon will be more than ready for anything we throw at them.”

“We could put together a specialized strike team and permit them to operate with their own discretion.”

“A smaller, more mobile team would definitely be better than lumbering bureaucracy, but do you think the U.N. would let us have the funds and resources to put one together? Do you think they’d even entertain the idea of letting that team operate without oversight?”

“Not after your shitshow in Venice, no.”

“That shitshow was necessary.”

“To show Moira you’re willing to use Talon tactics?”

“In part. And to ground Blackwatch.”

Jack’s brows came together in an intense frown. “You _wanted_ me to suspend all your operations?”

“I’d rather our meanest assets and heaviest artillery be grounded,” Gabriel explained. “We might not be able to use them, but neither will they.”

“They?”

“I told you before that Talon has been corrupting our operations. That’s not all thanks to Moira. We’ve been infiltrated. Badly. Aside from our original strike team, I trust Lacroix, McCree, Shimada, Sojourn and about a dozen others, but that’s it.”

“What do you mean that’s it?” Jack asked in alarm. “We have hundreds of employees.”

“All of whom have weak points Talon could press them on. The people I trust have unquestionable moral compasses, aren’t susceptible to monetary bribes and have few or no vulnerabilities – you know, close family, complicated medical needs, etc. But everyone else? Talon can and will force them to choose between Overwatch and the lives of their loved ones.”

“Why didn’t you just _tell_ me this? We could have figured out a way to restrict Blackwatch and start an internal investigation without nuking Overwatch’s reputation.”

“Not without tipping off one of Talon’s spies we couldn’t. If you started minimizing Blackwatch’s power with no impetus, they’d have assumed you knew about the infiltration, gone on high alert and shored up the resources they wanted. Those resources needed to be rendered inaccessible – to me and to them – in one major unforeseen decision. I needed to force your hand with something big and messy. I needed you to respond, well, the way you did.” Gabriel gave him a crooked smile. “With genuine, righteous anger.”

Agitated, Jack ran his hands through his hair.

“So, you’ve proven to Talon not only that you’re their kind of mercenary but also that the two of us are not in cahoots.” His eyes pinned Gabriel in place. “You’re setting us up on opposite sides of a _war_ , Gabriel. How the fuck are you expecting this to end?”

Gabriel didn’t answer for a long moment, his gaze lost somewhere in the empty glass. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet.

“With you taking me down.”

Jack’s fists clenched, fury spilling off him in waves.

Gabriel couldn’t help a dry laugh. “That part would have been easier on both of us if you hadn’t kissed me. And if I hadn’t kissed back, I guess.”

“Easier?” Jack hissed, the word like a missile. “If you needed to kill _me_ to bring down Talon, could you?”

“No,” Gabriel admitted. “But you’re a better person than I am.”

“You think I’m such a naïve idealist that I’d _execute_ you if you went rogue?”

“Your principles are—”

“Meaningless when it comes to you!” Jack shot to his feet, glaring. “Or have you failed to notice that?”

“Well, they _shouldn’t_ be,” Gabriel growled, standing as well and getting in Jack’s face. The glass was on the verge of cracking in his grip, so he set it down.

“Listen to me,” he continued in a calm, dangerous tone. “I have done and will do terrible things to get to Talon’s leaders and dismantle them from the top down. You think Venice made you angry? Wait until you watch me destroy everything we’ve built. Wait until I lead a coup against you in Overwatch headquarters. I am going to make you _hate_ me, because you are _good_ and people look to you for hope, and when Talon believes that someone like you wants me dead, they will trust me. And when they trust me, I can begin destroying them.”

Pale, Jack stared at him, his heart galloping at the bleak future mapped out for them.

“Why?” He breathed. “Why go through all that just to bring down Talon? There are other evil factions and governments out there and you’re not taking extreme measures to dismantle _them_.”

“Talon is engineering a second Omnic Crisis.”

Horror clamped a coat of ice around Jack’s spine and turned his stomach to mud.

Entire towns of murdered people still plagued his nightmares. The smell of corpses just left there. The screams of children mowed down by endless, apathetic bullets. Ana shivering and small in his arms. Gabriel distant and broken and empty. Millions of orphans. Young Omnics, horrified and confused after being freed from the god programs, burdened with sentience and despised by their creators. Jack occasionally jerked awake in a cold panic, sure he’d heard the fatal sound of Bastion units reconfiguring nearby. Though they rarely talked about it, he knew Gabriel’s sleep was equally tortured.

“I could kill every active and retired Overwatch agent and it still wouldn’t add up to a fraction of the lives I’d save by sabotaging Talon’s plans,” Gabriel said, grim and resigned. “If I have to sacrifice a few hundred to save a few million, I will do it. If I have to tell Marisol to never speak to me again and convince you to hate me to stop this from happening again, I’ll do that too.”

“No.”

“Jack…”

Gabriel stiffened in shock as Jack’s arms wrapped around him. This was…wrong. This was not what happened next. Jack was meant to punch him, scream at him, storm out of the room.

“You want us to have a huge public fallout? You want me to make a big show of disagreeing with you and hating you and getting in your way? I can do that,” Jack said. “But I will never stop loving you.”

“Were you not fucking listening?” Gabriel spat, pushing at his hold with trembling fingers. “I’ll destroy Overwatch. I am going to kill innocent people. I am going to ruin you and everything you’ve built.”

_The way I ruined my marriage. The way I endangered my family. The way I failed to protect Overwatch’s integrity._

Jack just hugged him tighter, squeezing the breath from Gabriel’s lungs.

For the first time, he felt he understood the levels Gabriel was operating on and why.

Most people viewed their lives with such a zoomed-in perspective: a shift at the office to suffer through, a weeklong holiday to enjoy, a semester at school, a season of allergies, a 2-year lease, a 5-year relationship. But Gabriel viewed his life, the few decades he had on earth, in the context of centuries. He was intensely aware of the complex enormity of the past and the endless future, titans on either side of his existence. How could a few assassinations or Overwatch’s reputation or his own happiness possibly matter as much as shifting human history in the direction of peace?

Jack loved him so much he thought he’d die from it. Gabriel was so brave and so good and demanded nothing from the world in return. Not glory, not love, not even thanks. He’d save humanity in silence, in the shadows, willing to be hated and forgotten if that’s what it took.

Jack wanted to give him everything.

Gabriel made a feeble attempt to pull back as Jack eased their foreheads together, noses brushing, and kissed him. Jack had no intention of letting Gabriel deny himself this too, even though it was clear that he’d intended to. If it hadn’t been for Jack’s thoughtless anger, that hard, panicked kiss in his office…

The thought of how close Gabriel had come to doing all this alone and loveless tore Jack’s heart in half. He poured his whole soul into the gentle connection of their mouths, a wordless declaration: _This you can have. This is yours. This has always been yours. You can give up everything else, but you will never lose me._

Gabriel swallowed around the knot in his throat, his eyes glinting wet, and the tension slowly drained from his muscles.

Jack was knocking to be let in and, as always, Gabriel opened the door for him.

And as always, Gabriel convinced himself that it was for Jack’s sake and not his own, that it didn’t matter to him either way, that he hadn’t been lonely in the SEP, that he didn’t need a spouse’s love anyway, that he hadn’t been terrified when his cells began breaking down, that he didn’t need Jack now.

Cracks began to appear in those pretenses when Jack asked to undress him, and then stripped him of more than just clothes. Gabriel tried to focus on matching Jack article for article, shirts tugged over their heads and belts unbuckled. He focused on how cumbersome it was to get their boots off and how no one looked sexy removing socks or wriggling out of jeans, but somehow it excited him when Jack did it. When he dragged Jack’s briefs off and Jack tenderly returned the gesture instead of letting Gabriel touch him right away, he tried to just focus on the blaze of lust in his belly and not the needy throb of his heart.

Gabriel couldn’t articulate why he felt so vulnerable when Jack divested him of that final piece of clothing, those blue eyes lighting up when the most intimate part of him was uncovered. It wasn’t anything Jack hadn’t seen before. Communal showers in the army meant they knew each other’s bodies well enough, could tell each other’s scar stories.

Crouched low to help Gabriel step out of his briefs, Jack pressed a reverent smile into his thigh.

“When was the last time you let anyone take care of you?” He murmured.

Gabriel rolled his eyes as if that question wasn’t a heated hook snagging on his insides. He dispensed with a glib comeback to let Jack urge him onto the bed, his obedience perfunctory, almost exaggerated, as though he was indulging Jack in a silly game. As though Jack wasn’t peeling away his defenses layer by layer.

Gabriel’s toes curled as Jack knelt over his body in what could only be called worship. Anxiety made him squirm as much as arousal. Lips skimmed the tender skin of his shoulders, the ridge of his clavicle and divots of his chest. Gabriel felt the weight of Jack’s blatantly ignored dick drag across his legs as Jack mapped his torso, but every time he tried to touch Jack back or shift their positions, he was gently rebuffed. Gently ordered to lie back and let Jack take him apart piece by piece.

Gabriel felt like he might die. Jack flattened his tongue over a dark nipple, suckled at the stiffened nub and teased it until Gabriel’s breathing sharpened, and then he repeated it all with the other nipple. He sank open-mouthed kisses into the sensitive range of Gabriel’s ribcage and traced old wounds with the tip of his tongue, lingering on them. His lips followed the trail of black hair from his bellybutton to his groin.

And all Gabriel could do was tug at that blond hair or rub a thumb over the large knife scar on Jack’s shoulder, the hit that Jack had taken for him all those years ago. Gabriel hated that mark, hated the possible alternatives it hinted at, a world where Jack didn’t survive the Omnic Crisis, a world where Jack died for him. But in this moment, it also anchored him. It helped him believe the impossible message Jack’s mouth was imprinting on his body:

Jack loved him.

A blush flooding his face, Gabriel watched with awe as Jack nuzzled affectionately into his balls. His dick bobbed obscenely until Jack took it in his warm hand and gave it long, slow licks up the underside, over and over. His blue eyes closed in blissful concentration as he lapped up the full length of him, wet and sloppy, like Gabriel was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted. Draped over Gabriel’s thighs, Jack’s other hand caressed the sensitive, plush testicles, which gradually grew slick with gathered saliva. 

Bottom lip between his teeth, Gabriel writhed. Hitched sighs tumbled out of him whenever a flick of tongue or a callused thumb swept over the glistening tip of his cock. The teasing wound him up like a clock. By the time Jack sucked the length of him into his mouth, he nearly snarled at the intensity of the sensation. Jack glanced up, hazy and heated, and the unfiltered adoration made Gabriel’s breath stutter in his chest. That anyone could look that joyful lavishing him with pleasure – especially right after he’d exposed the worst parts of himself – nearly unhinged him. He could laugh or cry or shout.

He had the vague thought that he shouldn’t be revealing how readily this was demolishing him, that it was important to maintain some semblance of control at all times, but Jack looked so fucking happy that Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to do anything but stroke his burning cheeks, cup his jawline, trace the ridges of his cheekbones to his earlobes.

Jack’s measured, loving attention began to accrue urgency, a deliberate quickening. The sinful rippling of a tongue against the head of Gabriel’s cock sent a clench of heat through him. Jack’s brows furrowed in concentration as he sucked Gabriel deeper into his mouth, hot and velvety and wait, _fuck_ –

A very undignified “Jack!” flew out of him as Jack swallowed him down, throat muscles quivering and squeezing around his cock. Breaths too fast, Gabriel raked all ten fingers through his blond hair, his thighs twitching as he barely contained the urge to thrust up into that tight wet perfect heat.

“Stop,” Gabriel moaned, slightly desperate. “You’ll – You’ll make me—”

Jack’s mouth popped off his dick with a wet sound.

“Want you to,” he rasped, lips swollen, breath coasting hot over Gabriel’s shaft.

Jack didn’t wait for permission. This time Gabriel’s hips did punch up as Jack sucked, tongue swirling over the slit, and sank down, taking Gabriel deep again and again.

Gabriel tossed his head, trembling, and his spine arched. He clamped a hand over his own mouth, stifling the wounded noises Jack drew out of him as well as the loud groan when the relentless waves of pleasure crested and finally _slammed_ him to shore.

Gabriel felt the low vibration of Jack moaning around his cock while it pumped out its salty release, and was struck by another bolt of disbelief that anyone could be so happy just pleasing him. Tears cut across his vision and he gritted his teeth, mortified.

Jack lapped up stray drops of semen, gentle and caring, and Gabriel had no clue how to thank someone for loving him that much. He could only tug Jack into his chest and hold him close, press his fierce heartbeat into Jack’s skin, kiss the side of his head and his brow and the hollow of his throat and his beautiful mouth.

He could only say “I love you” and hope that Jack understood that those words held Gabriel’s entire universe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally intended to be the final chapter, but it was getting so long (seriously the longest sex scene I have ever written) that I decided to split it into two to give it all the love it deserves. I'm hoping to have the last installment up by next month :)
> 
> Thank you so so much to everyone reading and leaving comments or kudos <3 <3 <3 This fic is pretty dear to my heart. Of all the R76 stories I've written, it might be the one I'm most proud of, since I think it touches upon all the reasons I love this ship so much: two very different people forming a deep bond thanks to both chance and choice, a decades-long friendship that evolves through multiple phases and challenges, how doing the right thing often involves complicated motivations and morals, power dynamics, and of course the possibility of ridiculously hot sex.


	8. Chapter 8

They let the soft moment linger, resting in it with their bodies entwined, treasuring each other’s every breath.

Gabriel adjusted his position so he could sprawl half on top of Jack, kissing him soundly and tracing the curve of his muscles, relishing the feel of his bare skin. Jack was still in excellent shape – in their line of work, to not be was to tempt fate – but he wasn’t a young man anymore, and neither was Gabriel, and there was something endearing about that, proof that they were human, that they were more than just the weapons the SEP had crafted them into.

Jack exhaled in low moans. As much as Gabriel’s mouth was taking him apart, it was those strong, competent hands that his soul followed after. The callused fingertips of one dug into the tender skin of his neck and skimmed behind his ears to rake through his hair. The other squeezed a pec, fingers splayed over the taut skin of Jack’s chest while a thumb swirled into a rosy nipple, until Jack’s moans turned rasping and impatient.

There was promise and possibility in that touch. It teased intimate and delicious things.

Caught between them, Jack’s erection was hard and hot, growing slick at the tip. Joy and lust pooled low in his gut as he felt Gabriel’s reawaken against his thigh, stamina overriding the recent satisfaction. He grinned into Gabriel’s mouth, eager and profoundly relieved to shed the routinely anticipated disappointment of a partner passing out after one climax.

“Favorite kinks, go,” Gabriel ordered, eyes like ink.

Jack chuckled against his lips. “Find out for yourself.”

Gabriel hummed at the challenge. “Hot wax?”

“Uh uh.”

“Latex?”

“Too much hassle.”

“Collars?”

“Depends who’s holding the leash.”

Gabriel slid a thumb over Jack’s swollen lower lip, in love with how Jack opened for him, and kissed him again, heavy and forceful. Stars flickered behind Jack’s eyelids. They separated with a soft, wet noise.

“That’s one of mine.”

“Kissing’s not very kinky,” Jack commented, breathless.

It was however, Jack discovered, a very real turn-on for Gabriel. He slid a hand over the nape of Gabriel’s neck, nipped at his bottom lip and nudged his mouth open with his own, kissing him deep and sultry, tilting his head, tongue moving slow and silky over Gabriel’s.

Gabriel all but melted. Goosebumps prickled up his spine and warmth washed through his nerve endings. Fully hard again, he found himself meeting Jack’s shallow thrusts, chasing the sweet friction between them. But he was meant to be focusing on Jack.

In the taxi ride, brief as it was, he’d learned that kissing Jack’s neck sent shivers through his whole body. He wanted to see how far that went. He began with the tender spot just below Jack’s ear and worked his way down with firm sucks and soft nuzzles and wet licks. He was living for the way Jack’s gravelly moans were eking higher and higher in pitch.

 _Fuck_ , Gabriel was a tease. Jack should have known he would be. It was 100% his style to pinpoint someone’s weak point and dismantle them with it. Jack was sorely tempted to just drag Gabriel’s hand to his cock. Imagining it wrapping around him was enough to send a burble of pre-cum drizzling over his belly. He wasn’t going to let Gabriel win that easily though.

While Gabriel marked up the tender junction of Jack’s shoulder and neck, he continued his interrogation.

“Whips? Paddles?”

“Maybe?” Jack’s laugh hitched as Gabriel lightly bit down. “Never tried it.”

“Choking?”

“Eh, once in a while.”

“Blindfolds?”

“Can take it or leave it.”

“Being restrained?”

There was a beat of silence and Gabriel drew back to look at him. Jack chewed his tongue behind a smile.

“Uh _huh_ ,” Gabriel said, eyes glittering.

Whatever remained of the sweet, cuddly moment evaporated in the sudden boiling heat.

Gabriel tried to grab his wrists but Jack squirmed and rolled, unseating Gabriel’s weight with a solid knee. Gabriel was surprised for half a second and then gleefully launched his counterattack, managing to hook an arm around Jack’s thigh. Laughing and sweaty, they grappled, toppling this way and that on the wide mattress.

Jack was half-draped over Gabriel’s back, attempting to throw him and failing because Gabriel had an equal hold on his legs. With an abrupt twist, Gabriel spilled their tangled limbs off the edge of the bed and — by luck or calculation — landed on Jack’s solar plexus, winding him for a moment.

That was all Gabriel needed plant his knees into Jack’s thighs and succeed in his initial attempt to pin Jack’s wrists. Tingling with adrenaline and desire, Jack gasped out when the grip clenched, the violence zinging along the edge of pleasure.

But to his confusion, Gabriel immediately released him.

“Sorry, sorry,” Gabriel chanted on instinct, sitting back on his heels and rubbing the back of his head.

Jack gave him a puzzled look that turned knowing and bemused.

How many times had Jack given Vincent a similarly brisk apology? A squeeze in a moment of passion meant inevitable bruises and hurt feelings. Combined with the insatiable stamina, this caution meant Jack had almost never fully let himself go during sex. He bet Gabriel hadn't either.

But now…

Jack cocked his head, tongue curling behind his teeth. “Sorry about what?”

Gabriel glommed on with a grin and pulled Jack to his feet with a deft motion. Then abruptly shoved him at the bed with enough force that Jack stumbled, landing hard on his front with the breath punched out of him. Gabriel crawled over him and Jack shivered as those calloused hands curled into an uncompromising grip on his biceps.

Jack tightened his muscles, his back curving as he tried to squirm out of the hold and buck Gabriel off. Heat coursed through him when Gabriel’s strength matched his easily, keeping him immobile. One feverish pink cheek pressed into the mattress, Jack breathed hard, a glassiness to his eyes. Jesus Christ, when was the last time someone _manhandled_ him into bed?

Gabriel caught the way Jack’s hips tilted into the sheets, attempting to relieve the ache of his dick trapped beneath him, and sank a fierce kiss into the crook of his neck, suckling hard. Jack let out a strangled noise that went straight to Gabriel’s cock. His groin slotted against Jack’s backside and ground against him, thick shaft dragging over the satin of his balls and pressing tight into the seam of his ass.

Jack pushed up into him, friction and anticipation fraying his senses.

Gabriel moaned hoarsely, breath hot in Jack’s ear. “I want to fuck you so badly.”

Flames erupted inside Jack. “Yeah – yes.”

“Yes?”

“Well, you did – ah – swear you could fuck me so hard, my eyes would roll into the back of my head. Should give you a chance to prove that.”

Jack also wasn’t unaware of how vulnerable Gabriel had been earlier. He had turned himself inside out, let Jack know exactly how vile he could be, and then let Jack boil him down further, cross every threshold, see him at his neediest. Jack sensed that Gabriel needed him to be the more vulnerable party now. Fine by him. With Gabriel’s cock dabbing pre-cum along his taint, protesting was the last thing on his mind.

“You sure?” Gabriel asked, husky. “Thought you said you weren’t a bottom.”

Jack stilled, searching his memory for that conversation, and then let out a huff.

“Thought you said you didn’t remember that,” he said, twisting to smirk up at Gabriel.

“Uh... Right,” Gabriel coughed.

Jack snorted. “I switch. Not strictly a top or a bottom.”

“Convenient. I never got much out of being a bottom.”

“I bet you’d bottom for me,” Jack said, arrogantly repeating Gabriel’s words back to him.

Gabriel’s smile widened into something thoughtful and predatory, stoking the fire beneath Jack’s skin. He leaned close.

“I might,” he rumbled agreeably. He pressed teeth into the scruff of Jack’s neck and Jack bucked up into him on impulse, felt the rigid velvet of him. “But I’m not sure that’s what you want right now, soldier.”

Jack’s cock gave a hard throb between his legs and he felt his cheeks burn.

“That, uh, might be another kink.” He tried to sound glib but desire roughened his tone.

“What? Military talk? You haven’t had enough of that for one lifetime?”

“Oh, you know, I kind of had this gorgeous senior officer I fantasized about blowing. Figured he’d order me down there.”

Gabriel let out a dark chuckle. “You should have seen how I reacted to you in formalwear.”

Well, if that didn’t do something sharp and wonderful to Jack’s insides.

Gabriel kissed down Jack’s spine, a trail from the nape of his neck down through his shoulder blades, before dismounting the bed. While he fished through his jeans pockets, Jack stretched like a cat and rolled over, shoving a pillow under his head. Flushed, he gave into the clamorous urge to take himself in hand, knees crooking as he stroked.

The mattress dipped. Jack opened his eyes to find Gabriel kneeling between his legs, several packets of lube in his hand and a hungry look on his face.

“Did I say you could touch yourself?” He growled.

Jack grinned. “No, sir.”

The rhythm of his hand didn’t slow though. He tilted his chin up and Gabriel nearly laughed at the defiance. It was so Jack. He joined the military, but talked back to superiors if it suited him. He wanted to play soldier in bed, but gave no guarantees he’d be a good subordinate.

Gabriel slid his free hand up the underside of Jack’s thigh. And then bit it.

Jack’s yell of surprise plunged into a moan. A crescent of teeth marks marred the pale flesh of his inner thigh, on the cusp of breaking skin. Gabriel licked it and looked at Jack expectantly. Even though Jack’s breathing had picked up into a gallop, even though he was _aching_ , the tip of his dick nearly sopping, he unwound his fingers.

Gabriel let a pleased smile cross his face at how Jack clenched his jaw against his obvious desperation. Jack had been able to withstand anything Gabriel threw at him in SEP; he could handle Gabriel’s commands in bed. Hell, Jack had wanted to join Gabriel’s squad specifically because he knew he’d be challenged.

“Hands behind your head. Hold onto the pillow.”

This time, Jack complied, the flush spreading to his throat and chest. Gabriel swallowed a groan at how fucked-out he looked already. He trailed slow, gentle fingertips along Jack’s cock, and his hips lifted of their own accord to chase the light contact. He cupped Jack’s balls, the pressure firm, skirting the edge of controlling, and Jack visibly swallowed.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Gabriel was too impatient to tease him for much longer. He opened two packets of lube and coated his fingers, grazing a tiny amount over the rim of Jack’s hole, in love with how Jack shifted to give him better access.

Massaging the clear gel inside with gentle prods, he slipped his index finger inside. A shiver rippled through Jack’s body, inner muscles tightening on instinct. Gabriel committed every sigh and clench to memory, already enthralled by the squeezing heat. The yearning to just bury his cock in Jack was overwhelming, but ringing louder in his blood was the craving to savor every moment.

A second digit slid in with relative ease, and a blaze lit inside Gabriel as he realized: “You opened yourself.”

“A bit,” Jack panted. “In the shower. Told myself I wasn’t going to let this happen but…” Jack gave him a roguish grin. “Wanted it to.”

Gabriel’s eyes were dark honey. Two slick fingers still hooked in Jack’s ass, Gabriel craned forward to kiss him, all raw love and frantic desire. Jack surged up into him, feeling everything. His obedience was short-lived as he released the pillow to wrap his arms around Gabriel’s shoulders and neck.

Gabriel pulled back with a gasp and snatched up another packet, handing it to Jack to open with his non-slick hands. Gabriel’s fingers withdrew so he could add a squeeze of lube to them, and then he carefully nudged three back in. The grip of Jack’s muscles fluttered at the stretch, the shuddering heat of him maddening. Gabriel attempted to steady himself by clinging to Jack’s thigh, mesmerized as he watched Jack’s hole stretch for him, relax for him, take whatever he gave.

He drove in deeper, knuckles grazing Jack’s rim. The firmer thrusts had Jack rolling his hips, ruddy cock bouncing at the motion. Jack fought the urge to close his eyes, wanting to watch the expressions on Gabriel’s face, wanting to watch how Gabriel watched him. Amazement burned the air between them, amazement this was real.

Jack let out a ragged shout as a hard jolt of pleasure cantered up his spine.

Gabriel drew back slowly, and then drove back harder into the same spot. Jack flung his head back and groped at the bedspread.

“ _There_ , Gabe, more, I, sir –”

Jack barely finished gasping out the shattered plea before Gabriel’s mouth closed over the head of his cock, silky warmth enveloping the hypersensitive shaft.

Gabriel knew his blowjob skills were nowhere near as sophisticated as Jack’s, but the simple sucking and bobbing were bolstered by his insistent fingers, which pressed into Jack’s hot melting center again and again, alternating gentle nudges with more forceful ones, until Jack was shaking and writhing, a sheen of sweat on his forehead, toes curling into the sheets.

Different shades of pleasure blurred and crashed inside Jack, the tight wetness around his cock and the rich fullness inside him and that it was Gabriel Gabriel _Gabriel_ – his breath broke as the pleasure arced high and _exploded_ , volatile and devastating, every muscle contracting, Jack practically choking as his cock spurted and bounced hard off the roof of Gabriel’s mouth while Gabriel’s fingers shot electricity through his entire body.

Gabriel felt like his very blood was glowing, hot and strong and bright as lava, as Jack fell to utter pieces in his hands and melted on his tongue. The powerful squeeze on his fingers sent hard bolts of pure _want_ straight to his cock. The sight of Jack dazed and mussed, clinging to the bedsheets for dear life, lit a fierce loving lustful ache in Gabriel’s gut. _He’d_ done that to Jack.

Chest heaving, Jack couldn’t seem to keep his vision in focus or finish a thought or stop moaning with every exhale. Gabriel’s fingers were still thrusting in and out, shallow and sweet, an easy pressure that carried Jack along like a warm river as the delicious tension unraveled into heady, soporific bliss. But there was a wonderful greedy part of him already clamoring for more. Because he knew Gabriel could give him more. And he wanted it. He wanted all of it. All of him.

Gabriel was draped over his midsection, languid and content, using Jack’s bent leg to stay upright. He occasionally planted a lazy kiss into Jack’s pecs, his lips and beard brushing the tender skin. Barely a few minutes passed before Jack’s spent dick started to swell and thicken against Gabriel’s ribcage.

The fingers still knuckle-deep inside him suddenly twisted.

“Gabe!” Jack choked out, hips spasming, knee colliding with the side of Gabriel’s shoulder as another snap of pleasure unspooled from his groin.

Gabriel hummed a self-satisfied laugh and dragged a slow lick over Jack’s left nipple. His touch morphed from soothing to teasing, easing Jack down from one high only to start him climbing the next. Jack grit his teeth and tossed his head, his nails digging into Gabriel’s shoulders. He nearly snarled as the pressure just barely grazed where he needed it most.

“ _God_ ,” Jack groaned.

“Want me to stop?” Gabriel asked.

Jack’s gaze locked onto his, burning blue. “Want you to fuck me.”

Gabriel felt Jack’s inner muscles clutch at his fingers and his own cock pulsed against the bedspread, eager and impatient and so desperately ready to be inside Jack.

Jack grunted as the fullness in his ass withdrew, a smooth motion that unleashed quiet tingles of pleasure.

“Do you want me to wear a condom?” Gabriel asked. Thanks to the SEP, neither of them could contract or carry anything, but it was never polite to assume.

“No.”

Gabriel leaned in to kiss him, savor him, then emptied the remainder of the lube into his palm and slicked it over his shaft. Jack’s eyes raked over the motion and he licked his bottom lip. Before Gabriel could ask how he wanted to do this, Jack was shoving the other pillow under his lower back, angling his hips up. A foot hooked around Gabriel’s waist to pull him close.

The blunt head of Gabriel’s cock kissed at the reddened rim of Jack’s hole. For a precious moment, they stared at each other, saw the everything they were and had been to each other, opponents and partners, commanders and subordinates, colleagues and friends. Now, lovers.

Gabriel swallowed and pressed forward, unwilling to look away for even a second as he sank inch by inch into Jack. As Jack’s body resisted, relaxed and accepted all of him.

And finally – _finally_ – they were connected, seamless together, one heartbeat echoing clear and bright through them both.

Gabriel let out a shaky exhale, a thick knot of emotion in the back of his throat. Jack’s palms swept over his cheeks, thumbs following the curve of his cheekbones.

“I love you so much,” Jack rasped out, the feeling all-encompassing and vital.

They were both so intensely aware of where Gabriel rested snug inside him, a key in its lock.

“I have never loved or wanted anyone the way I love and want you,” Gabriel murmured, the words like sunlight.

Heart shining through his wet eyes, Jack drew him down into a tender kiss, sweat sticking their chests together, pounding pulses bouncing off one another. Jack squeezed him close and Gabriel squeezed back just as hard.

The world could be whatever it wanted, but this this _this_ was theirs. Theirs and perfect.

Gabriel began to move, unhurried and light thrusts, as though he wanted to memorize Jack from the inside out. Jack breathed out swears as Gabriel’s cock plunged in and out of him with deliberate, sure movements, feeling his own body opening to it, warming to it, wanting it.

The slow steady ache for each other simmered, the sensual and languid connection bubbling hotter as pleasure sang through their nerves. Desire twisted into something tighter, needier, already roping them into more urgent movements. Jack’s hips rose to meet Gabriel’s thrusts, a plea and a demand and a dance.

Jack sensed the restraint, the hunger Gabriel was still automatically leashing, and crushed their mouths together, the kiss brutal and heavy, almost taunting, almost angry.

Gabriel growled into Jack’s lips, and fucked into him _hard_.

“Ga—” Jack gasped out.

A flicker of worry paused Gabriel’s movements, but Jack was clawing at his shoulders, chest heaving, heels digging into Gabriel’s ass, and he was _begging_.

“Like that, like that, please, Gabe, please, want you, give me—FUCK!”

A tidal surge of pleasure _slammed_ through Jack as Gabriel drove in deep and hard, cock thick and hot and forceful, sparks setting fire to his senses. The pressure scorched through him, melted him down. He could feel it in his fingernails and the back of his eyeballs and every follicle of hair. 

Desire shone white hot from Gabriel’s core, a blaze fed by every gasped inhale and sharp-edged exhale. He moaned, nearly whined, as Jack took everything, matched his rhythm, dense heat squeezing and shuddering around him, pulling him in. This belonged to him. Jack belonged to him. Jack was defenseless and decimated by the pleasure Gabriel was driving into him. Jack was his.

Jack’s fingers spasmed and scraped against Gabriel’s burning skin, wanting to grab on, hesitating. Jack still reflexively released every time he squeezed, holding back, catching himself. Gabriel noticed.

“C’mon, Jack. Stop thinking. Let go.”

His breath coasted hot over the sensitive crook of Jack’s neck. He licked up the curve, tasted salt, pressed his teeth in. Jack shuddered against him.

“I got you, sunshine.” Gabriel kissed the words into his skin. “I love you. Let go.”

Jack made a choked noise. Panting open-mouthed, he tipped his head back, eyes falling shut. And finally, the hold on Gabriel’s biceps closed into a punishing grip, fingers digging into the dense muscle hard enough to snap wood.

Gabriel grinned, giddy, soaring, and fucked into him _harder_.

“AH, oh fuck oh f— _God_ —!”

Gabriel’s pace was steady and brutal and Jack rode every thrust to its end. Roaring blinding throbbing pleasure flooded them both, nuclear, growing, as bit by bit they unraveled their safeguards, forgot themselves, got lost in each other, lost in the thunderous feel of the other.

Jack rolled them over with an animalistic snarl and Gabriel slipped out of him. Barely a second passed before Jack was guiding him back in, sinking down onto Gabriel’s cock with half a whine tearing up his throat. Jack’s weight settled heavy and solid on Gabriel’s hips, snapping a groan out of him.

Jack reached behind him to grab Gabriel’s powerful thighs from beneath, pulling at them as he fucked himself down, hard enough to _feel_ it, the warm sting of being stretched further than he’d ever been before. Gabriel was sapped of breath as his cock was pulled in deeper, harder, grinding into the spot that pitched Jack’s voice higher and louder.

Gabriel watched in amazed desire as Jack took what he wanted. Jack was gorgeous and wild as he fell apart, gritting his teeth and flinging his head back and clawing bruises into Gabriel’s skin. The slick and scalding grip of Jack’s body on his dick deleted all thoughts from his head except for the unbelievable fact that _he_ was the one Jack was crumbling to pieces for, the only one who could free him this way. He held Jack’s waist, like one dancer steadying another, while Jack rode him, chest muscles gleaming with sweat as they tensed and untensed with every slide up and down.

“ _Ga_ —Gabe, touch me,” Jack begged, nearly sobbed, his mind and voice cracking. “Please, sir.”

Gabriel’s hips jerked up at those words and he very nearly finished then, but he managed to rein in his orgasm an instant before it snapped its leash. He had to take care of his soldier, his lover, his Jack first.

Jack’s dick bobbed stiffly, swollen and red, shining with pre-cum. He let out a ragged noise when Gabriel cupped his balls, massaging them in lush circles before he took the shaft in hand and palmed the slippery tip. Tremors wracked Jack’s thighs. It wouldn’t take more than a few firm pulls.

“I’m going to cum inside you,” Gabriel growled.

Jack nodded with an incoherent, needy whimper.

“You’re going to feel me fill you up and you’re going to know you’re mine.”

“Always—always been yours,” Jack panted out, grinding down.

Amidst the crashing tidal waves of delirious sensation, Gabriel’s heart threatened to burst out of his chest and join the stars in the sky.

“Love you,” Gabriel chanted, voice scratched tight. “Love you. Love you. Love you.”

He squeezed and stroked, once, twice, illuminating Jack’s every nerve ending. Sparks fused and burned, hotter, pleasure zinging along coils wound tighter, brighter, tighter, a lit firework, a screaming rocket, and then, and then, oh God oh God oh _God_ —

More than one cry shredded Jack’s throat as he writhed and bucked, battered by pleasure from all angles, unable to breathe. Ecstasy erased and replaced his bones, his mind, his soul. Every muscle clenched and shook and shuddered as he spent himself over Gabriel’s belly and chest, thrashing as the lightning inside him struck again and again and again.

The crackling didn’t end. Those hands he loved so much were wrapped around his hips, bruising shadows into his skin and holding him in place as Gabriel pistoned up into him, chasing his own finish, relentless and powerful enough to wring gasps from Jack. Sweat skated the taut cords of Gabriel’s neck. Jack’s name was snarled into the air and Gabriel suddenly stilled, mouth open and eyes screwed shut, _fully_ hilted inside him.

And Gabriel shattered.

Blurring into the bliss ringing like a bell through Jack’s entire body was joyous awe at the sensation of Gabriel’s dick throbbing thick and deep inside him, pulsing out semen in hard bursts, hot and wet and perfect.

Jack slumped forward, slow and satiated. He was _sore_. It was _delicious_. Pleasure ribboned out from where they were still connected, lazy sizzles up their spines. His forehead nuzzled Gabriel’s collarbone, rising and falling with his heaving breaths. Gabriel’s fingertips tenderly grazed up his back and into his hair. They fit together. It was easy.

“So,” Jack rasped out. “That’s what everyone in the SEP was so hyped about.”

“Meow.”

Jack snorted out a laugh and rested on his elbows to cradle Gabriel’s face, their bloodstreams singing _yes yes yes_ in harmony as they both drank in each other’s blissed out expressions. Their unguarded smiles were embarrassingly, excruciatingly, almost violently happy.

“Always been mine, huh?” Gabriel murmured.

His heart throbbed as Jack’s smile softened, blue eyes fierce and loving.

“Always have. Always will.”

Lying there in the aftermath, sheets damp, fingers entwined, they watched with mild interest as the bruises and hickeys and scratches faded from each other like puddles drying in the sun, leaving no trace behind.

Jack thought about the ladder of tragedies that had led them to this moment, the world fractured by war, the fragile peace in need of caretaking, the withered friendships, the neglected family members, the decayed marriages, Overwatch’s lethal wounds, the disaster in Venice. Somehow, out of all these broken pieces, they’d built a stairway above it all, above the clouds, higher than that.

Jack wasn’t stupid enough to think there wouldn’t be more climbing in the future. People like them didn’t retire, didn’t settle down among the stars to admire the moon. The climb was the whole point. They kept climbing until they were brought down, by time or bullets or their own missteps.

But until then, they had the rough and simple joy of holding hands as they climbed into the darkness above.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhhh my baby's all grown up. I don't think I've ever poured so much love and energy into a fic before. Like I said at the end of the previous chapter, I really did get the chance to dive deep into all aspects of what I love about Jack and Gabriel's relationship here, and it was a real pleasure to try and do justice to all their complexities.
> 
> Thank you a million times to everyone who's read, kudosed, left comments on or even just enjoyed this story <3 There's nothing so precious for a writer as hearing your work connected with someone.
> 
> While I don't have any other major multi-chapter R76 fics in the works, I do have 3-4 smaller pieces I'm playing around with (including one for a zine!). If you want updates or just want to chat, come hang with me on Twitter at [@MsTrick16](https://twitter.com/MsTrick16) :)


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